Chapter 7. Ejectives in English and German 191
2.1 Structural distribution
All studies are in agreement that ejectives in English occur finally, although fur-
ther details are less clear. So, while Catford (1977: 70) merely states that ejectives
can occur as realisations of final /p, t, k/, Roach (2002: 24) restricts the context to
“the end of a word preceding a pause”. The most detailed attempt to describe the
structural contexts in which ejectives can occur is undertaken in Ogden (2009),
based primarily on data from naturally occurring Scottish English:
Ejectives occur:- word finally (and not e.g. before vowels)
- in stressed syllables
- after vowels, nasals and laterals (which are all voiced), but not after voiceless
sounds such as [s] - within utterances (before pauses), as well as at the end of utterances.
(Ogden 2009: 163)
2.2 Sources and functions
It is one thing to recognize that ejectives occur in a language, another to describe
what functions they are fulfilling in the language in question. Ejectives could arise
from at least four different sources. In English it is possible that they are simply
allophonic, i.e. a contextual or conditioned variant of plosives. This would imply
that in at least certain varieties of English, just as it is possible to predict a pul-
monically fuelled aspirated plosive in the onset of a stressed syllable, so we should
be able to predict the occurrence of an ejective in a particular final context. This
does not seem to be the case. So, while Ogden (2009) provides a number of
contexts in which ejectives can occur, the presence of the context itself does not
guarantee the occurrence of an ejective. However, epiphenomenal ejectives in
German and possibly some of those in English might be candidates for this type
of prediction (see below).
More plausibly, and as a possible prior stage to a more systematic phonological
status, ejectives in many varieties of English are part of the sociophonetic varia-
tion employed by individual speakers in different communicative contexts. To
date little sociophonetic analysis of ejectives has been undertaken, but one study
supports this analysis for Scottish English. Gordeeva & Scobbie (2006) analysed
the speech of seven pre-school children and showed that approximately 10% of
word-final stops were realized as ejectives, although no more direct prediction of
the occurrence than this is provided.