ejective

An ejective is a type of consonant produced with a glottalic egressive airstream mechanism. In making an ejective, the vocal tract is closed at the glottis and the larynx is raised to compress air in the oral cavity; when the oral closure is released, a burst is produced without air flowing from the lungs. This results in a distinctive, often sharply released consonant.

Most ejectives are stops or affricates, but ejective fricatives also occur in some languages. They are typically voiceless, though there are rare cases of voiced ejectives or ejective sequences that include voicing effects. The characteristic release tends to contrast with pulmonic (air from the lungs) consonants, giving ejectives a recognizable phonemic presence in affected languages.

Ejective consonants are found in a wide but uneven distribution across the world. They are especially common in the Caucasus region (for example, Georgian and related languages), as well as in many Ethiopian and Andean languages (such as Amharic, Tigrinya, Quechua, and Aymara). They also occur in several Native American languages, including some Athabaskan languages like Navajo. The typological prominence of ejectives has made them central to discussions of non-pulmonic airstream mechanisms in phonology.

In transcription, ejectives are typically indicated by a raised apostrophe after the stop symbol, as in p’, t’, k’, or by dedicated diacritics in some analyses. This notation distinguishes them from pulmonic consonants and helps capture their unique articulatory basis in linguistic description.