Do any Athabaskan languages reduce the 3 way stop contrast?
Posted: Wed May 11, 2022 1:35 pm
I've been reading up on changes to ejective consonants across the world's languages, and I think it's quite interesting how stable they seem to be - in Semitic the original ejective series have become pharyngealised (also probably in Berber?), and in other Afroasiatic languages there appears to a change of at least some consonants to implosives (though I'm not sure how good a model Semitic is for 'regular' sound changes). I am also aware in the Nakh subgroup of Northeast Caucasian, Chechen and Ingush lenite stem-internal ejectives to voiced plosives, but I've been struggling to find parallels in other families.
Which led me to Athabaskan (and Na-Dene more generally, though I've not found a convincing PND reconstruction as of yet) - in this family, there is a very well attested three-way contrast between tenuis, aspirated and ejective. From what I know of the family (which is admittedly rather superficial), I don't know of any individual language that deviates from this three way contrast - some have shifted the places of articulation around, but all ND languages that I'm aware of have preserved tenuis, aspirated and ejective/glottalised rather perfectly (I believe some may have introduced voiced stops via loanwords, but that's outside the scope of my question). I was curious if there are any counterexamples to this apparently well preserved trait.
(Also fwiw, I'm not interested in a glottalic theory debate for PIE)
Which led me to Athabaskan (and Na-Dene more generally, though I've not found a convincing PND reconstruction as of yet) - in this family, there is a very well attested three-way contrast between tenuis, aspirated and ejective. From what I know of the family (which is admittedly rather superficial), I don't know of any individual language that deviates from this three way contrast - some have shifted the places of articulation around, but all ND languages that I'm aware of have preserved tenuis, aspirated and ejective/glottalised rather perfectly (I believe some may have introduced voiced stops via loanwords, but that's outside the scope of my question). I was curious if there are any counterexamples to this apparently well preserved trait.
(Also fwiw, I'm not interested in a glottalic theory debate for PIE)