The typological generalizations that emerge from comparing phoneme inventories and phonological processes in as many of the world’s languages as possible are the foundation of theory building in phonetics and phonology. Since one-third of the world’s languages are spoken in Africa, one would expect them to be well-represented in typological surveys of segment types and segment inventories. However, this is not the case. This paper aims to address that gap by surveying, specifically, the occurrence of laryngeal stop qualities – voiceless unaspirated, voiced, voiceless aspirated, implosive and ejective – in a large (300+) geographically and genetically diverse sample of African languages. The results of the survey turn out to challenge common assumptions about laryngeal markedness for stops and stop inventories, demonstrating the importance of this kind of areally-focused typological survey and the need for more phonetic investigations of African languages as the basis for future surveys.

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