Non-pulmonic consonants

[CarsonDaConlanger]

I have noticed the frequency of ejectives and implosives is a lot lower in conlangs than in natlangs. Do people not like them? I think they sound cool.

[Pabappa]

Tapilula, the parent language of most of my conlangs, has an ejective /k_>/. The daughter languages vary from no ejectives to keeping just this one to having a full set, like Khulls which has /p_> pw_> t_> k_> kw_>/. But no implosives. I have a very minor sideline project that has clicks, but they're rare even there, always coming from clusters like /pk/ in the earlier stages of the language.

[CarsonDaConlanger]

Interesting! My current conlang, Ádonar, has a three way contrast between unvoiced, voiced, and implosive for stops, but no clicks.

[sangi39]

So far, I've got the phonologies (phoneme inventories, descriptions of allophony, etc.) for the following languages:

Proto-Sirdic
Proto-Skawlas
Lesi Kirra (a.k.a. Proto-Lesic) (contains ejectives contrasting with voiceless, geminate, and prenasalised voiced plosives)
Proto-Tl'arga (contains ejectives contrasting with aspirated and voiceless plosives, also contains ejective fricatives vs. voiceless fricatives)
Proto-Sjikan
Proto-Vuluka
Proto-Gdrenk (contains ejectives contrasting with voiced and voiceless plosives)
Proto-Kalabi
Proto-Feluo
Proto-Mesit
Proto-Nemita (contains ejectives contrasting with aspirated and voiceless plosives)
Proto-Gadar
Proto-Siwida
Proto-Lorgyak (contains implosives, but they have pulmonic consonants allophones, i.e. /ɓ ɗ/ > [m d] syllable-finally. Contrastsa with aspirated and voiceless plosives)
Proto-Siltom (contains ejectives contrasting with voiced and voiceless plosives)
Proto-Limba (contains ejectives contrasting with aspirated and voiceless plosives)
Proto-Hirbol (contains click consonants, with them and pulmonic plosives contrasting voiceless, aspirated, and voiced[ish], plus nasal clicks)

So in my phonologies so far, 35% of them include ejectives (making them over-represented compared to the 20% of languages containing clicks on Earth), 6% contain implosives (under-represented this time, compared to 13%), and a final 6% contain clicks (over-represented again). In basically every language so far containing ejectives, they make up a third series in the plosives.

I quite like them

[DesEsseintes]

I think a lot of conlangers toy with ejectives, implosives and clicks.

Currently two of my conlangs contain ejectives.

TLFKAT has an ejective counterpart to every plain stop and affricate, labialised or no, for a total of 28 phonemic ejectives. Ejective vs plain is the only distinction in stops ever since I removed phonemic aspiration.

Limestone also has a plain vs ejective contrast but only in stops.

I have a small sketch for a clicklang with a minimal inventory and no velars. It’s not at all developed though.

[Ahzoh]

I have an entire family of languages that use them and some other conlangs too.

[Isfendil]

The reason why few conlangs have them is because most of those conlangs are germanic languages and romance languages, and most native languages of conlangers lack ejectives, so all of these factors contribute to that typological rarity.

[Parlox]

Lohondla has a voiced velar implosive.
Proto-Alare has a set or bilabial, coronal, and velar implosives.
Lohondlas first sketch of it's pyonology had clicks, but lost them in it's ongoing revision.

None of my other current conlangs have non-implosives of any kind, though a few "extinct" conlangs of mine, like Podmåri, had ejectives.

[Evynova]

I have used ejectives too, albeit in just a single conlang so far. I don't like the sound of implosives all that much though, but I'm planning on playing around with them in the future.

I believe the reason they are so rare in conlangs is because a majority of conlangers speak languages that do not have non pulmonic consonants, and I suppose they tend to use phonologies they are familiar with, so as to be able to read/speak their creation.

There are many features that aren't all that common in conlangs and definitely should be, imho.

[Salmoneus]

The reason why few conlangs have them is because most of those conlangs are germanic languages and romance languages

The majority of conlangs are romlangs or germanic languages? Hardly.


Regarding the OP: according to CALS, 35% of conlangs have some form of glottalised consonants; according to WALS, only 28% of natlangs have some form of glottalised consonant. Obviously, neither number is a statistically ironclad sample, but it gives a general idea.

Most 'weird' features are overrepresented in conlangs, if they're obvious and easy to explain (but underrepresented if they're subtle or complicated).

[Creyeditor]

My ejective lang is K'uk'uts', which has an awful lot of ejectives

[Tuyono]

I believe the reason they are so rare in conlangs is because a majority of conlangers speak languages that do not have non pulmonic consonants, and I suppose they tend to use phonologies they are familiar with, so as to be able to read/speak their creation.

There are many features that aren't all that common in conlangs and definitely should be, imho.

What features do you mean?

Personally I try to avoid using sounds that I can't pronounce, because I need to say the words sometimes to know if they sound right. I can kinda do ejectives, or at least something close, so I might use them at some point. Implosives and clicks are a different story (and so are tones. Or even just big vowel inventories - my native language has five vowels )

[Reyzadren]

I don't really hear much difference between the ejectives/implosives and their pulmonic counterparts, so I usually just shelve them as acceptable allophones or variations.

For your statistics, there are no non-pulmonic consonants in my conlang.

[Nachtuil]

The reason why few conlangs have them is because most of those conlangs are germanic languages and romance languages

...
Most 'weird' features are overrepresented in conlangs, if they're obvious and easy to explain (but underrepresented if they're subtle or complicated).

I think this is very true!

I myself think ejectives are cool. A current language of mine has them but not phonemically. Only when voiceless stop and ejective meet at a syllable boundary. I have done a few sketches with ejectives too. It is true that I have never played with implosives or clicks though.

[Eritzap]

I personally like the sound of stop ejectives (fricatives and affricates not so much)
Of my main conlangs (as in, the one I developped further than phonologic sketches)

Nictian has a three-way distinction between stops: unvoiced, aspirated, and ejective/glottalized (in normal speech I set for a geminate unvoiced allophone)

Selqu is an old conlang and reflects my poor understanding of clicks (and ability to pronounce them) at the time. It has 3 clicks: a bilabial, an alveolar, a palatal. They are theorically tenuis, but are nasal voiced between vowels (nasal voiced was the only kind of manner I could reliably pronounce). Way more recently I started the construction of the family's proto-language "Proto-Elcorian", and settled the diachronic processes which resulted in Selqu's tiny click inventory.
Proto-Elcorian itself has 32 clicks (4 articulations * 8 manners), as well as a serie of ejective stops.
I also sketched an unnamed sister lang to Selqu with 15 clicks.

ǃHaat’ki has 28 clicks and a serie of pre-glottalised which can be argued to be non-pulmonic.

[Evynova]

What features do you mean?

I didn't have any example in particular in mind; but if I were to give some, I'd say, unusual verb alignments, word orders other than SVO or SOV, consonant harmony, reduplication, genderlects, stuff like that. It's always pleasantly surprising to see any of those pop up in a new conlang, at least to me.

[eldin raigmore]

What features do you mean?

I didn't have any example in particular in mind; but if I were to give some, I'd say, unusual verb alignments, word orders other than SVO or SOV, consonant harmony, reduplication, genderlects, stuff like that. It's always pleasantly surprising to see any of those pop up in a new conlang, at least to me.

How about a separate dialect spoken only by deities, though comprehensible to mortals?
For instance, it might be the only dialect with first-person trial pronouns and/or agreement.
This might go along with a perception that nearly every deity is a trinity.

Or one spoken only by married people?
Maybe they’re the only ones who can use first person dual.
This might be a result of taking “the twain shall become one” a bit too literally.

Gotta admit I like the genderlects idea.
The others too.

——————————

AFMCL:
Proto-Adpihi had ejectives, but Adpihi doesn’t.

Adults who’ve never known a language with clicks etc., reportedly have trouble perceiving them as speech-sounds in allegro speech, when trying to learn to understand such a natlang.
For my own part when I heard the protagonist speak in “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, I heard the non-pulmonic-egressive consonants as a bewildering accompaniment to the “actual speech”. Of course I couldn’t’ve understood it without subtitles anyway!

[Vlürch]

One of the conlangs I worked on a few weeks or months ago has no plain pulmonic stops except for /q ʔ/, only ejective and implosive ones and coarticulated pulmonic ones; it's supposed to be spoken by so-called giants who live in the sky, so I thought it makes sense for the /p t k/ and /b d g/ to have become /pʼ tʼ kʼ/ and /ɓ ɗ ɠ/ with time for some reason. Not really sure why, but it makes sense to me. As for /k͡p g͡b k͡t g͡d/, I guess they developed out of thin air or were originally clusters; /q/ could've simply remained pulmonic somehow or developed later; /ʔ/ is easily justifiable since the majority of the stops are glottalised, though. It also has /(◌̰)pʼː (◌̰)ʈʼː (◌̰)kʼː/, /(◌̰)ɓː (◌̰)ᶑː (◌̰)ʛː/ and even /(◌̰)k͡pʼ (◌̰)k͡tʼ/. It has stuff like /(◌̰)d̚t͡ɬʼ/, too, and consonants that cause preceding vowels to become syllabic fricatives of various kinds. It's grammatically weird, too, in that it has no verbs; all that stuff is included in adjectives. So, an archetypal weird ass noob conlang, I guess, but well.

Just an example sentence to demonstrate it:

Ktīrikzlmavḥḥamojj ēḥriḥḥāḥqōdū!
[k͡tiːʀik͡xʼə̆d̚t͡ɬmɑv̰χʼːɑmɔ̰d̚t͡ʃʼ eːxʼʀḭχʼːɑxʼqoːɗuː]
ktīri-k-zlm-av-ḥḥam-ojj ēḥr-iḥḥā-ḥqō-dū
hand-nom.du-inal.du-3p.pos.sg-masc.pos-inan.possd pres-red-cont-mir
His hands are turning red!

...and no, I can't pronounce 99.9% of it.

But yeah, I like ejectives; my favourite is definitely [q͡χʼ]. I find implosives pretty annoying in natlangs, but still fun to mess around with in conlangs.