Citizendia
Your Ad Here

Manners of articulation
Obstruent
Stop
Affricate
Fricative
Sibilant
Sonorant
Nasal
Flaps/Tap
Trill
Approximant
Liquid
Vowel
Semivowel
Lateral
Airstreams
Ejective
Implosive
Click
This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. In Linguistics ( Articulatory phonetics) manner of articulation describes how the tongue lips and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make In Phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes obstruents and Sonorants An obstruent is a Consonant sound formed by A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Affricate Consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or) but release as a fricative (such as or or occasionally into Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together A sibilant is a type of Fricative or Affricate Consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the Vocal tract towards In Phonetics and Phonology, a sonorant is a Speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the Vocal tract. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the In Phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of Consonantal sound which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the In Phonetics, a trill is a Consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the Place of articulation. Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants Liquid consonants, or liquids, are Approximant Consonants that are not classified as Semivowels (glides because they do not correspond phonetically In Phonetics, a vowel is a Sound in spoken Language, such as English ah! or oh!, pronounced with an open Vocal tract Semivowels — also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels —are Vowels that form Diphthongs with full syllabic vowels Laterals are "L"-like Consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both In Phonetics, ejective consonants are Voiceless Consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the Glottis. Implosive consonants are stops (rarely Affricates with a mixed Glottalic ingressive and Pulmonic egressive Airstream mechanism. Phonetics (from the Greek φωνή ( phonê) "sound" or "voice" is the study of the physical sounds of human speech The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic [Help]
[edit]

Clicks are speech sounds such as English tsk! tsk! used to express disapproval, or the tchick! used to spur on a horse. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic In many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa, they are ordinary consonants, found for example in the name of the language Xhosa. Xhosa (ˈkǁʰoːsa ( isiXhosa) is one of the Official languages of South Africa. Clicks are best known in the West through the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy. The Gods Must Be Crazy is a Film released in 1980 written and directed by Jamie Uys. In 2003 clicks were in the news with an announcement that the original human language may have had clicks, but most linguists consider that to be utter speculation.

Technically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. In Phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes obstruents and Sonorants An obstruent is a Consonant sound formed by The pocket of air enclosed between is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue. (That is, clicks have a velaric/lingual ingressive airstream mechanism. In human speech ingressive sounds are those in which the airstream is inward through the mouth or nose ) The forward closure is then released, producing what may be the loudest consonants in the language, although in some languages such as Hadza, clicks can be more subtle and may even be mistaken for ejective stops. Hadza is a Language isolate spoken by fewer than a thousand people along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. In Phonetics, ejective consonants are Voiceless Consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the Glottis.

Contents

What clicks sound like

There are five places of articulation at which click consonants occur. In IPA, a click is symbolized by placing the assigned symbol for the place of click articulation to the left of a symbol for a nonclick sound at the same place of articulation.

The above clicks sound like affricates, in that they involve a lot of friction. Affricate Consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or) but release as a fricative (such as or or occasionally into The other two families are more abrupt sounds that do not have this friction.

Languages with clicks

Clicks occur in all three Khoisan language families of southern Africa, where they may be the most numerous consonants. The Khoisan languages (also Khoesaan languages) are the indigenous languages of southern and eastern Africa; in southern Africa their speakers are the Khoi To a lesser extent they are found in several neighbouring Bantu languages which borrowed them from Khoisan. The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family A Sprachbund (ˈʃpraːxbʊnt in German plural Sprachbünde) from the German word for “language union” also known as a linguistic area, convergence The most famous of these are the languages of the Nguni cluster (Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, Phuthi, Ndebele, and the Zulu-based pidgin Fanagalo); the other Bantu click languages are Sesotho, Yeyi of Botswana, and the Mbukushu, Kwangali, and Gciriku languages of the Caprivi Strip. Zulu (called isiZulu in Zulu is a Language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers the vast majority (over 95% of whom live in South Xhosa (ˈkǁʰoːsa ( isiXhosa) is one of the Official languages of South Africa. Swati ( siSwati in the language itself isiSwazi in Zulu is a Bantu language of the Nguni group spoken in Swaziland and Phuthi ( Síphùthì)is a Nguni Bantu language spoken in southern Lesotho and areas in South Africa adjacent to the same border A pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common in situations such as Trade Fanagalo or Fanakalo is a Pidgin (simplified language based on the Zulu, English, and Afrikaans languages History Should include probable history of the language what form of Bantu it is most closely derived from (the coolest forms! dates of movement of major groups Yeyi or ShiYeyi is a endangered Bantu language spoken by 45000 people along the Okavango River in Namibia and Botswana The Republic of Botswana (Lefatshe la Botswana is a Landlocked nation in Southern Africa. Caprivi, sometimes called the Caprivi Strip (in German Caprivizipfel) or the Okavango Strip and formally known as Itenge, is a narrow protrusion

There are three small languages in East Africa which use clicks: Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, as well as Dahalo, an endangered South Cushitic language of Kenya which has clicks in only a few dozen words. Sandawe or Sandawi is a Tonal language spoken by about 40000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Hadza is a Language isolate spoken by fewer than a thousand people along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. Tanzania ˌtænzəˈniːə officially the United Republic of Tanzania (Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya Dahalo is an endangered South Cushitic Language spoken by at most 400 people on the Kenyan coast near the mouth of the Tana River The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken in the Horn of Africa. The Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north Somalia to the northeast Tanzania to the south It is thought these may remain from an episode of language shift. Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or language replacement or assimilation, is the progressive process whereby a speech community

The only non-African language known to employ clicks as regular speech sounds is Damin, a ritual code used by speakers of Lardil in Australia. Damin (Demiin in the practical orthography was a ceremonial language register used by the advanced initiated men of the Lardil (Leerdil Lardil or Leerdil is a nearly extinct Tangkic language spoken on Mornington Island, Queensland. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. One of the clicks in Damin is actually an egressive click, using the tongue to compress the air in the mouth for an outward (egressive) "spurt".

The Southern African Khoisan languages only utilize root-initial clicks. The root is the primary lexical unit of a Word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents Hadza, Sandawe, and several of the Bantu languages also allow syllable-initial clicks within roots, but in no known language does a click close a syllable or end a word. Hadza is a Language isolate spoken by fewer than a thousand people along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania. The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds

English and many other languages may use clicks in interjections, such as the dental "tsk-tsk" sound used to express disapproval, or the lateral tchick used with horses. An interjection is a Part of speech that usually has no connection with the rest of the sentence and simply expresses Emotion on the part of the speaker In Ningdu Chinese, flapped nasal clicks are used in nursery rhymes, and in Persian and Greek a click accompanied by tipping the head upwards signifies "no". Ningdu County ( Chinese: 宁都县 is a county, under the jurisdiction of Ganzhou, in Jiangxi province People's Republic of China Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Clicks occasionally turn up elsewhere, as in the special registers twins sometimes develop with each other, in ritual codes like Damin, and in onomatopoeic usages. In Linguistics, a register is a subset of a Language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting Damin (Demiin in the practical orthography was a ceremonial language register used by the advanced initiated men of the Lardil (Leerdil

The airstream

The essence of a click is an ingressive airstream mechanism. However, in nasal clicks the nasalization involves a separate nasal airstream, generally pulmonic egressive but occasionally pulmonic ingressive. In human speech egressive sounds are those in which the air stream is created by pushing air out through the mouth or nose In human speech ingressive sounds are those in which the airstream is inward through the mouth or nose Similarly, voiced clicks also require a simultaneous pulmonic egressive airstream to power the voiced phonation. Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of Phonetics.

The front articulation may be coronal or, more rarely, labial. The rear articulation has traditionally been thought to be velar or, again more rarely, uvular. Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants However, recent investigation of Nǀuu has revealed that the supposed velar–uvular distinction is actually one of a simple click versus a click–plosive airstream contour, and that all rear articulations in Nǀuu are uvular or even pharyngeal. Nǀu or Nǀuu, also known as Nǀhuki ǂKhomani or Nǁngǃke is a moribund Tuu (Khoisan language spoken by the Nǁnǂe people in South Africa. In Phonetics, contour describes speech sounds which behave as single segments but which make an internal transition from one quality place or manner to another Even in languages without such a distinction, such as Xhosa, experiments have shown that when the click release is removed from a recording, the resulting sound is judged to be uvular, not velar. Xhosa (ˈkǁʰoːsa ( isiXhosa) is one of the Official languages of South Africa. However, it is possible other languages do have a velar articulation.

Since in at least some languages clicks are not velar, some phoneticians have recently come to prefer the term lingual (made with the tongue) as being more accurate for this airstream mechanism than velaric (made with the velum).

Types of clicks

As noted above, clicks necessarily involve at least two closures: an anterior articulation which has traditionally been represented by the special click symbol in the IPA, and a posterior articulation which has been traditionally described as oral or nasal, voiced or voiceless, etc. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the The literature also describes a contrast between velar and uvular rear articulations for some languages. Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants However, recent work has shown that for languages which make this distinction, all clicks have a uvular, or even pharyngeal, rear closure, and that the clicks explicitly described as uvular are in fact clusters/contours of a click plus a pulmonic consonant, in which the clusters/contour has two release bursts, the click itself and then a uvular consonant. In the case of "velar" clicks in these languages, on the other hand, there is only a single release burst, that of the forward click release, and the release of the rear articulation isn't audible.

Nonetheless, in most of the literature the stated place of the click is the anterior articulation (called the release or influx), while the manner is ascribed to the posterior articulation (called the accompaniment or efflux), as in a "nasal dental click".

There are numerous manners of clicks. These include what has been described as voiceless, voiced, aspirate, breathy voiced, nasal, voiceless nasal, breathy voiced nasal, glottalized, voiceless nasal glottalized, affricate, ejective affricate, prevoiced, prenasalized. In a few of the Khoisan languages, clicks cluster with other obstruents. Examples of such clusters in !Xóõ a voiced velar click followed by voiceless affricated ejective, [gǃkx’], and a velar ejective click followed by uvular ejective, [kǃ’q’][1].

The size of click inventories ranges from as few as three (in Sesotho) or four (in Dahalo), to dozens in the Juu and Tuu languages (Northern and Southern Khoisan). See also Sesotho language Dahalo is an endangered South Cushitic Language spoken by at most 400 people on the Kenyan coast near the mouth of the Tana River The Juu languages (also spelled Ju, Zhu, or Dzu) also known as the ǃKung languages (also spelled Kung, Xû, Xun The Tuu or Taa-ǃKwi ( Taa-ǃUi, ǃUi-Taa, Kwi) languages are a Language family consisting of two language clusters spoken ǃXóõ, a Tuu language, has fifty click phonemes[1] and over 70% of words in the dictionary of this language begin with a click. [2]

Clicks appear more stop-like or more affricate-like depending on their place of articulation: In southern Africa, clicks involving an apical alveolar or laminal postalveolar closure are acoustically abrupt and sharp, like stops, while bilabial, dental, and lateral clicks typically have longer and acoustically noisier releases that are more like affricates. A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Affricate Consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or) but release as a fricative (such as or or occasionally into Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior Alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets A laminal consonant is a Phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the Postalveolar consonants are Consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the Alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips ( bilabial articulation or with the lower lip and the upper teeth ( labiodental articulation In Linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a Consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth such as /t/ /d/ /n/ and Laterals are "L"-like Consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both In East Africa, however, the alveolar clicks tend to be flapped, while the lateral clicks tend to be more sharp and abrupt. In Phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of Consonantal sound which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the

Transcription

The five click releases with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are bilabial ʘ, dental ǀ, palato-alveolar or "palatal" ǂ, (post)alveolar or "retroflex" ǃ, and alveolar lateral ǁ. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic The retroflex and palatal releases are "abrupt"; that is, they are sharp popping sounds with little frication (turbulent airflow). The bilabial, dental, and lateral releases, on the other hand, are "noisy": they are longer, lip- or tooth-sucking sounds with turbulent airflow, and are sometimes called affricates. (This applies to the forward articulation; both may also have either an affricate or non-affricate rear articulation as well. ) The apical releases, ǃ and ǁ, are sometimes called "grave", because their pitch is dominated by low frequencies; while the laminal releases, ǀ and ǂ, are sometimes called "acute", because they are dominated by high frequencies. A laminal consonant is a Phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the (At least in the Nǀu language, this is associated with a difference in the placement of the rear articulation: "grave" clicks are uvular, whereas "acute" clicks are pharyngeal. Nǀu or Nǀuu, also known as Nǀhuki ǂKhomani or Nǁngǃke is a moribund Tuu (Khoisan language spoken by the Nǁnǂe people in South Africa. Uvulars are Consonants articulated with the back of the Tongue against or near the uvula, that is further back in the mouth than Velar consonants A pharyngeal consonant is a type of Consonant which is articulated with the root of the Tongue against the Pharynx. ) Thus the alveolar click /ǃ/ sounds something like a cork pulled from a bottle (a low-pitch pop), at least in Xhosa; while the dental click /ǀ/ is like English tsk! tsk!, a high-pitched sucking on the incisors. The lateral clicks are pronounced by sucking on the molars of one or both sides. The bilabial click /ʘ/ is different from what many people associate with a kiss: the lips are pressed more-or-less flat together, as they are for a [p] or an [m], not rounded as they are for a [w].

At one time, the step was taken to augment the IPA with a set of Latin-based symbols for these sounds. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic But the new symbols were never much used, and were eventually given up for the set of symbols in established use among Khoisanists:

Competing orthographies
bilabial dental alveolar palatal lateral
Khoisanist ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ
old IPA ʇ ʗ ° ʖ
Zulu c q x

There are a few less well attested articulations, such as a noisy laminal denti-alveolar lateral release (<Ⅲ> [triple pipe] in an ad hoc transcription), which contrasts with an apical postalveolar lateral in Mangetti Dune ǃKung; an abrupt sub-apical retroflex release <‼> in Angolan ǃKung; and a "slapped" alveolar click <ǃ¡> in Hadza and Sandawe, where the tongue slaps the bottom of the mouth after the release. (These distinctions may suffice for the Damin releases as well. ) However, the Khoisan languages are poorly attested, and it is quite possible that, as they become better described, more click releases will be found.

In the literature, the places not directly supported by the IPA are transcribed with ad hoc digraphs:

Provisional extended click symbols
bilabial dental alveolar retroflex palatal
Central ʘ ǀ ǃ ‼ ǂ
Lateral ǀǀǀ ǁ ǂǂ
Flapped ǃ¡

Typically when a click consonant is transcribed, two symbols are used, one for each articulation, connected with a tie bar. This is because a click such as [ŋ͡ǂ] has been traditionally been analysed as a nasal velar rear articulation [ŋ] pronounced simultaneously with the forward ingressive release [ǂ]. The symbols may be written in either order, depending on the analysis. However, a tie bar is not often used in practice, and when the manner is a simple [k], it will often be omitted as well. That is, <ǂ> = <kǂ> = <ǂk> = <k͡ǂ> = <ǂ͡k>.

The manner of a click is generally written before the release: <ŋ͡ǂ> or <ŋǂ>, and this is preferred by the IPA. However, many Khoisanists prefer to write the manner second: <ǂ͡ŋ> or <ǂŋ>. This is because any diacritics which follow belong to the manner rather than to the forward release, and they are more easily understood when they are made diacritics of the manner. Regardless, elements which do not overlap with the release are always written according to their temporal order: Prenasalization is always written first in <ŋɡ͡ǂ> = <ŋǂ͡ɡ>, and the second ejective is always written second in <k͡ǂ’q’> = <ǂ͡k’q’>.

While the SAMPA encoding for IPA into ASCII doesn't have symbols for transcribing clicks, the proposed X-SAMPA standard does: O\, |\, |\|\, =\, and !. The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters based on the International Phonetic American Standard Code for Information Interchange ( ASCII) The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C Some instead suggest ||\, #\ or "\ for the alveolar lateral click. The Kirshenbaum system uses a different method: clicks are denoted by digraphs, with the click symbol (always "!") added to the stop homorganic to the release, but with the manner of the accompaniment. For example, /t!/ is a voiceless dental click, and /m!/ is a nasal bilabial click. (This transcription is used in the literature on Damin. ) However, the International Phonetic Association recommends using the IPA symbols in Unicode, or using the number codes which they have assigned to each symbol. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

Places of articulation

These are often called click types, releases, or influxes. There are seven or eight known releases, not counting slapped or egressive clicks. These are bilabial affricated ʘ, or "bilabial"; laminal denti-alveolar affricated ǀ, or "dental"; apical (post)alveolar plosive ǃ, or "alveolar"; laminal postalveolar (palato-alveolar) plosive ǂ, or "palatal"; subapical postalveolar (retroflex) ǃ˞ (in central Ju); and two lateral clicks, which in the only dialects known to distinguish them (northern Ju) are laminal denti-alveolar lateral ǁ̻ with a forward release, and apical postalveolar lateral ǁ̺ with a rear release. The retroflex clicks are a family of Click consonants found only in Juu languages of southern Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia There may be an additional palatal lateral click (a palatal click with a lateral release), provisionally transcribed ǂǂ, in another Ju lect which is currently (2008) being investigated. Given the poor state of documentation of Khoisan languages, it is quite possible that additional releases will turn up. However, no language is known to contrast more than five places of articulation.

Click release
inventory		 Languages
dental ǀ only Dahalo
alveolar ǃ only Sesotho
3 releases, ǀ, ǃ, ǁ Sandawe, Hadza, Xhosa, Zulu (in Hadza and sometimes Sandawe, ǃ is "slapped";
Hadza also has a single word with ʘ)
4 releases, ǀ, ǂ, ǃ, ǁ Korana, Nama, Yeyi, Zhuǀ'hõasi (southeastern Ju)
4 releases, ǀ, ǂ, ǃ˞, ǁ ǃKung (Grootfontein)
5 releases, ʘ, ǀ, ǂ, ǃ, ǁ ǂHõã, Nǀu, ǀXam, ǃXóõ
5 releases, ǀ, ǂ, ǃ, ǁ̺, ǁ̪ ǃKung (Angola)
5 releases, ʘ, ʘ↑, ǀ, ǃ, ǃ˞ Damin

Names found in the literature

The terms for the click releases were originally developed by Bleek in 1911. Since then there has been some conflicting variation. Here are the terms used in some of the main references.

Click release Bantu letters Also known as:
ǀ dental c dental affricative/affricated/with friction; alveolar affricated; denti-alveolar; apico-lamino-dental; denti-pharyngeal
ǂ palatal palato-alveolar; alveolar; alveolar instantaneous; denti-alveolar implosive; palato-pharyngeal
ǃ alveolar q cerebral; (post-) alveolar implosive; palato-alveolar; palato-alveolar instantaneous; palatal; palatal retroflex; apico-palatal; central alveo-uvular
ǁ lateral x lateral affricative/with friction; alveolar lateral affricated; post-alveolar lateral; lateral apico-alveo-palatal; lateral alveo-uvular

Manners of articulation

(Data is primarily from Ladefoged; see references at individual language articles. )

Click manners are often called click accompaniments or effluxes, but both terms have met with objections on theoretical grounds.

There is a great variety of click manners, both simplex and complex, the latter variously analysed as consonant clusters or contours. In Linguistics, a consonant cluster (or consonant blend) is a group of Consonants which have no intervening Vowel. In Phonetics, contour describes speech sounds which behave as single segments but which make an internal transition from one quality place or manner to another With so few click languages, and so little study of them, it is also unclear to what extent clicks in different languages are equivalent. For example, the [ǃkˀ] of Nama, [ǃkˀ ~ ŋˀǃk] of Sandawe, and [ŋ̊ǃˀ ~ ŋǃkˀ] of Hadza may be essentially the same phone, as may [ǃk͡x’] and [ǃq͡χ’]; no one language distinguishes either set, and the differences in transcription may have more to do with the approach of the linguist than with actual differences in the sounds.

Some Khoisan languages are typologically unusual in allowing mixed voicing in non-click consonant clusters/contours, such as dt͡s’k͡x’, so it is not surprising that they would allow mixed voicing in clicks as well. Linguistic Typology is an international Peer-reviewed journal in the field of Linguistic typology, founded in 1997 Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of Phonetics.

There is ongoing discussion as to which clicks are best analysed as consonant clusters. For example, some linguists feel that ejective clicks are not possible, and indeed in many Khoisan languages they appear to be clusters. However, in other languages, phonetic measurements have found that, although the ejective release follows the click release, it is the rear closure of the click that is ejective, not a subsequent consonant. (In Ladefoged's analysis in the table below, if there is only a single segment, this is indicated by a single non-subscript letter for the accompaniment. ) This is one reason for analysing such clicks as airstream contours instead of clusters.

Of the languages illustrated below,

(all spoken primarily in Namibia and Botswana)

The four Dahalo manners occur only with a dental release. Damin has only nasal clicks, but in addition has a voiceless unaspirated "spurt" that might be considered an egressive click. Three Sandawe clicks (*) conflate to prenasalized voiced [ŋǃg] between vowels. In other languages nasalization may be variable, and best heard between vowels.

IPA Manner ǃXóõ Nǀuu ǂHoan Zhuǀ’hõasi Korana Nama Gǀui Sandawe Hadza Dahalo Xhosa Damin
[ǃk] Voiceless unaspirated velar plosive • • • • • • • • * • •
[ǃkʰ] Aspirated velar plosive • • • • • • • • * • •
[ǃkˀ] Voiceless unaspirated velar plosive and glottal stop • • • •
[ǃkˀ, ŋˀǃk] Voiceless glottalized velar plosive (prenasalized between vowels) • • •
[ŋ̊ǃˀ] Voiceless velar nasal and glottal stop • •
[ǃg] Voiced velar plosive • • • • • • *
[ǃgx,
ǃg͡ɣ,
ǃgʱ]		 Voiced affricated velar plosive •
[ǃgʱ] Breathy-voiced velar plosive •
[ǃŋ] Voiced velar nasal • • • • • • • • • • • •
[ǃŋʷ] Labialized voiced velar nasal •
[ǃŋʱ] Breathy-voiced velar nasal •
[ǃŋ̊] Voiceless velar nasal • •
[ǃŋ̊ʷ] Labialized voiceless velar nasal •
[ŋ̊ǃh] Voiceless delayed-aspirated velar nasal • • • • • •
[ŋ̊↓ǃh] Voiceless ingressive pulmonic nasal with delayed aspiration •
[ʔǃŋ] Preglottalized velar nasal • •
[ŋǃŋ̊ʰ] Voiced velar nasal followed by voiceless aspirated velar nasal •
[ǃq] Voiceless unaspirated uvular plosive • • • •
[ǃqʰ] Aspirated uvular plosive • • •
[ǃk͡x] Voiceless affricated velar plosive • •
[ǃq͡χ] Voiceless affricated uvular plosive • • •
[ǃq’] Uvular ejective • • •
[ǃk͡x’] Affricated velar ejective • •
[ǃq͡χ’] Affricated uvular ejective • • •
[ǃk’q’,
ǃk’k͡x’]		 Voiceless velar ejective, followed by uvular ejective •
[ǃgh,
ǃgkʰ]		 Voiced velar plosive followed by aspiration • •
[ǃgk͡x] Voiced velar plosive followed by voiceless velar fricative •
[ǃgk͡x’] Voiced velar plosive followed by voiceless affricated ejective •
[ǃgq’,
ǃgk͡x’]		 Voiced velar plosive, followed by uvular ejective •
[ɴǃɢ],
ǃɢ		 Voiced uvular plosive (usually prenasalized) • • •
[(ɴ)ǃɢh,
(ɴ)ǃɢx,
(ɴ)ǃɢʀ]		 Voiced (or prenasalized) uvular plosive, followed by aspiration, velar fricative, or uvular trill •

Click genesis and click loss

Clicks are often portrayed as a primitive or primordial feature of human language, but we have no reason to suspect that they are very old compared to other speech sounds. In fact, given their complexity, they may be relatively recent. How clicks arose is not currently known. Some linguists suggest that they developed from other complex consonants; others suggest that clicks were initially used for taboo avoidance, then borrowed into regular speech. Doubly articulated consonants are consonants with two simultaneous primary places of articulation of the same manner (both plosive or both nasal etc Avoidance speech, or " mother-in-law languages " is a feature of many Australian Aboriginal languages, some North American languages and Bantu

However, several nonendangered languages in vigorous use demonstrate click loss. For example, the East Kalahari languages have lost a large percentage of their clicks, presumably due to Bantu influence. The Khoe languages are the largest of the non- Bantu language families indigenous to southern Africa The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family As a rule, a click is replaced by a consonant with the manner of articulation of the accompaniment and the place of articulation of the forward release: alveolar click releases (the [ǃ] family) tend to mutate into a velar stop or affricate, such as [k], [ɡ], [ŋ], [k͡x]; palatal clicks ([ǂ] etc. In Linguistics ( Articulatory phonetics) manner of articulation describes how the tongue lips and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make In Articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a Consonant is the point of contact where an Obstruction ) tend to mutate into a palatal stop such as [c], [ɟ], [ɲ], [c’], or a post-alveolar affricate [tʃ], [dʒ]; and dental clicks ([ǀ] etc. ) tend to mutate into an alveolar affricate [ts].

Notes

  1. ^ a b L&M 1996, p 266
  2. ^ L&M 1996, p 246

References

See also

External links

The contrary opinion:

© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
 Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic