Uvular ejective stop
A uvular ejective is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is.
Features
Features of a uvular ejective stop:Occurrence
A single plain uvular ejective is found in almost all Northeast Caucasian languages, all South Caucasian languages, and some Athabaskan languages, as well as Itelmen, Quechua and Aymara.Most Salishan languages, Tlingit, as well as Adyghe and Kabardian, demonstrate a two-way contrast between labialised and plain uvular ejectives.
The Akhvakh language appears to have a contrast between lax and tense uvular ejectives: vs. .
Abkhaz contrasts plain, palatalised and labialised uvular ejectives, written, e.g., аҟаԥшь , -ҵəҟьа , Аҟәа . As with Georgian, Abkhaz has no non-ejective uvular stops; the historically present uvular aspirates have merged with their corresponding fricatives, although the aspirates are preserved in Abaza.
A plain uvular ejective is one of the most common consonants in Ubykh, due to its presence in the past tense suffix. But in addition to palatalised, labialised and plain uvular ejectives, Ubykh also possesses a pharyngealised version and a concurrently labialised and pharyngealised version, making a total of five: , , , , .