Re: Bat Sounds/Phonology Redux

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003 07:15:48 -0500, "J. K. Hoffman" <ryumaou@...>
wrote:

>I guess I need to think about *that* some more.  Xhosa was the language
>I was thinking of when I made reference to African languagesm but it
>hadn't occured to me that they would used more than one kind of click!
>It makes sense, now that I consider it.  I guess I'm still pretty
>Western European in my thinking about language.
>The way I was imagining it was as a remnant of their sonar system.  Sort
>of a "one ping" kind of sounding to check the responsiveness of their
>conversation mate.  The way we might read body language or facial
>expression.  How is it used in Xhosa and Zulu?  Or, how did you use
>clicks in your languages?
The clicks in Xhosa and Zulu are pretty much normal consonants. Taking a
few random samples from the vocabulary in _Teach Yourself Xhosa_, there's
ukucinga "to think", iqunube "berry", and ixesha "time" (where "c", "q",
and "x" represent the clicks). Clicks can also be aspirated: ichiba "pond",
isiqhamo "fruit", izixhobo "tools". There are even nasalized clicks,
pronounced with a simultaneous [N]: uncedo "help", umnqathe "carrot",
unxweme "coast". Note that the sounds represented by "nc", "nq", "nx" are
not sequences of [n] + a click, but a voiced velar nasal pronounced
simultaneously with the click. (Well, I'm not sure if it's a velar or
uvular nasal in Xhosa, but you get the idea.)

My Nikta language (where "Nikta" is the English mangling of [N_!et_>a]) has
a series of clicks including bilabial, dental, alveolar, retroflex,
palatal, and velar. (Well, the velar "click" might really be a voiceless
implosive, but the Nikta aren't human, so it's possible they can pronounce
some sounds that are difficult or impossible for humans.) These are used as
consonants, and can even occur at the ends of words (tlik! "musical mode",
k'ásnk!imp! "warrior"). The clicks are even used in affixes, such as -ak!
"instrumental plural" or -nt!at' "second person singular perfective".

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