Affricates as Noncontoured Stops

Abstract

Abstract. This paper reviews evidence that affricates are simple stops bearing no feature [+continuant] and involving no subsegmental contouring at any level of the phonology. The fricative noise associated with the affricate release can usually be regarded as the phonetic implementation of the feature [+strident], as originally proposed by Jakobson, Fant, and Halle (1952). This analysis is strongly confirmed by the principle of Plosive-Affricate Complementarity, according to which the simple-stop analysis of affricates predicts just the attested set of plosive-affricate contrasts and no others, given a rather small set of widely-accepted features. The common process of affrication before high vowels and glides does not involve [+continuant] spreading but reanalysis of the intrusive fricative segment created by aerodynamic conditions at the stop-to-vowel transition. Affricates constitute a well-known case of phonology-phonetics “mismatch, ” in which one phonological segment (the affricate) is realized as two phonetic segments (a plosive interval released into a fricative interval). Though affricates superficially resemble plosive + fricative sequences, they are counted as single segments in the phonology for reasons such as the following:

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