190 Adrian Simpson
British English at least, ejectives would seem to be on the increase. In this paper,
I will draw together the observations in the literature on ejectives in English and
in German, two languages in which ejectives are considered to play at most only
a very marginal role. I will examine the problems we confront when trying to
describe the functions they are carrying out and how this could be inextricably
linked to the ways in which they might be being produced. In particular, the form
and elusive distribution of ejectives in English raise a number of interesting chal-
lenges for sociophonetic analysis. For this reason, rather than being quantitative,
this paper is essentially qualitative and, in places, speculative as to questions of
distribution and, indeed as to how ejectives might actually be being produced.
However, central to this paper, as it is to others in this volume (Stuart et al.,
Temple), is the time that I will spend looking at and at times casting serious doubt
on what it is we are actually describing.- Ejectives in English
Although this needs to be empirically verified, ejectives would appear to be
becoming more frequent in many varieties of English. It is possible that this has
to do with changing expectations or changes in analytical and observational
techniques, but it seems unlikely that the widespread occurrence of ejectives in a
range of English varieties today would have escaped the attention of such an acute
observer as Catford, who mentions the occurrence of ejectives in English only in
passing: “in English they occasionally occur as the realization of final [p, t, k] in
pathological speech, and in some northern English dialects” (Catford 1977: 70).
The apparent marginality is supported by the absence of any mention of ejec-
tives in earlier detailed studies of (pre-)glottalisation in English (Higginbottom
1964; Roach 1973, 1979). Although later, Roach (2002: 24) states that “[i]n English
we find ejectives allophones of /p, t, k/ in some accents of the Midlands and North
of England”. Wells (1982), however, does attribute the use of ejectives to “both
northerners and southerners” (1982: 261).
It is also possible that an increase in the prevalence of ejectives in English is
merely a further development in the increase in the prevalence of pre-glottalised
plosives and glottal replacement which Roach (1973, 1979) was primarily con-
cerned with, although Collins & Mees (1996) show us that we need to be cautious
when jumping to conclusions about the timeline of apparent changes.