Factors in the affrication of the ejective alveolar fricative in Tigrinya

Ejective fricatives are typologically rare sounds, attributable to the fact that they
present an articulatory dilemma with contrasting demands for their fricative and
ejective components. Several articulatory coping mechanisms have been observed
across languages (Maddieson 1997; 1998). In the case of Tigrinya, Shosted & Rose
(2011) find that the ejective alveolar fricative, /s’/, is affricated more often than not
(/s’/ produced as [ts’]), proposing affrication to be another possible coping mech-
anism. This study assesses two possible factors affecting the rate or degree of af-
frication in Tigrinya: 1) the vowel environment surrounding /s’/ and 2) the lexical
frequency of words containing /s’/. While we find no effect of lexical frequency,
we find a significant effect of vowel context, with the lowest rate of affrication oc-
curring following [i] and preceding [u]. We propose that this finding suggests that
this environment, naturally aids the production of ejective fricatives due to vowel
coarticulation, as the decreasing supralaryngeal volume over the duration of the
fricative counteracts the loss of air due to frication.