Ejective consonant

In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced, and tenuis consonants. Some languages have glottalized sonorants with creaky voice that pattern with ejectives phonologically, while other languages have ejectives that pattern with implosives—this has led to phonologists positing a phonological class of glottalic consonants that includes ejectives.

Description

In producing an ejective, the stylohyoid muscle and digastric muscle contract—causing the hyoid bone and the connected glottis to raise—while the forward articulation (at the velum in the case of [kʼ]) is held, raising air pressure greatly in the mouth, so that when the oral articulators separate, there is a dramatic burst of air. The Adam's apple may be seen moving when the sound is pronounced. In the languages where they are more obvious, ejectives are often described as sounding like “spat” consonants; but ejectives are often quite weak and, in some contexts, and in some languages, are easy to mistake for tenuis or even voiced stops. These weakly ejective articulations are sometimes called intermediates in older American linguistic literature and are notated with different phonetic symbols: ⟨C!⟩ = strongly ejective, ⟨Cʼ⟩ = weakly ejective. Strong and weak ejectives have not been found to be contrastive in any natural language.