With a database of over 180 languages and dialects, this book proposes a typology of the phonological patterning of ejectives, drawing together widely-scattered information. A small number of autosegmental operations in phonology such as spreading, deletion, fusion, and fission, constrained by a hierarchical, constriction-based feature geometry, accounts for the major processes which ejectives undergo.Individual chapters detail the spread of ejection through assimilation, the delinking of laryngeal features through deglottalization, the delinking of place features through debucallization, the dissimilation of ejectives through fission. Each chapter includes theoretical issues of representation, and extensive documentation of both synchronic alterations and diachronic changes, along with a consideration of the phonetic motivations of the phenomenon in question.