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The Status of Phonetic Rarities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Peter Ladefoged  and
Daniel Everett
Peter Ladefoged*
Affiliation:
UCLA
Daniel Everett
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
*
Peter Ladefoged, Phonetic Laboratory, Linguistics Department, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095 [oldfogey@ucla.edu]
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Abstract

Most sounds can be described in terms of a standard set of phonological features, or in terms of values of well-known phonetic parameters. But some languages, particularly the smaller endangered languages of the world, also contain many unusual sounds that test our traditional descriptive theories. An example is the dental plosive followed by a bilabial trill, found in the Chapakuran languages. We suggest that there is a set (with fuzzy boundaries) of more common sounds that participate in a wide range of general linguistic processes and another set of rarer sounds that have been observed in only one or two languages.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 794 - 800
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 Linguistic Society of America

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