nonesuch 12: the full gamut of (voiceless) palato-alveolar, alveolar, bilabial, and (dialectally) velar affricates (see Image)
- Where found
- German (Germanic, IE)
- Domain
- phonology
- Subdomain
- phoneme inventory
- Keywords
- affricates, alveolar, palato-alveolar, bilabial, velar
- Type
- nonesuch
- Universals violated
- not yet in UA
- Source
- any grammar of German
In terms of plain numbers, it is not uncommon for languages to have more affricates than four, owing to the exploitation of contrasts especially of voicing and aspiration or more rarely of ejectivity; also, there are inventories with palatal(ized), or retroflex, or lateral affricates (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996: 90-91, 204-209). Labial affricates as such seem quite rare (a voiceless and voiced labiodental affricate is attested, for instance, in Beembe (Bantu, Niger-Congo). Rarer still, and perhaps unique to German, are affricates in all three place ranges, dental/alveolar, labial, and velar/uvular.
Ladefoged, Peter & Ian Maddieson (1996). The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Blackwell.