clicks & creating words

This is romilly@egl.net:

<<If I'm understanding you right, the kiss sound involves sucking the air in,

the pop sound blows it out, similar to an ejective.  So given a primary

closure (lips) and secondary closure in the oral tract (at the velum IIRC),

and pressure built up between the two, it must have to do with the order in

which the 2 closures are released.  Just impressionistically, I'd say the

kiss has "ingressive" air-stream, the pop "egressive"; if there's only one

"bilabial click"symbol, it could probably be modified with a diacritic.>>

    Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about, and I noticed the exact same
thing with ingressive and egressive air.

<<I find I can make the same distinction at alveolar position, ingressive the

common "tch-tch" or "tsk-tsk" sound, egressive sort of a [tT]; but it seems

to be difficult/impossible? at any other POA.>>

    I can do it post-alveolarly, as well.  Not lateraly.

Bfowol scripsit:

<<Is the other sound you describe rather like the sound of a
cork popping? I find that I produce it with the lips against
the teeth and with much greater tension in the lips, so it
_might_ be described as a fortis velaric labial stop>>

    See, for me, it feels like the kissing sound requires more muscles; the
popping sound is much easier.  But yes, like a cork popping.

<<Doke
had come up with distinct symbols for all three (back in the
40s/50s, don't have the citation handy), but that was before
the IPA (unwisely I feel) opted to adopt the Africanist symbols
for the clicks. In C. M. Doke's transcription (which didn't
include labial clicks) he had distinct symbols for voiceless
clicks, voiced clicks & nasal clicks.>>

    This I never heard of.  And for the life of me, I can't make a nasal or
voiced click.  Know of a place where I could hear a sound byte?

Rob a écrive:

<<Officially the bilabial click is a popping sound.
At least, during phonology class that was stressed very much.>>

    In my phonology class, they said the opposite.  Sounds like it's a
conspiracy.  The IPA heads are trying to keep us in the dark while they make
off with the dough!  Grrrr...

    On word creation: I'm a big fan of translation, for two reasons: (1)
Obviously it forces you to create more words, but more importantly, (2) if
you translate something that's heavily imbedded in the semantics of a given
language and culture (take Shakespeare, for example), it will force you to
think about how your culture would convey the idea.  Because you can read
Shakespeare and know what the idea is he's trying to convey, and then look at
the words he uses.  From there, all you need to do is decide which words you
want to use to convey the same thing.  Something as simple as "the gods
above" can come out way differently.  After all, who says gods need to be
above?  Why not below or all around or under the rug?  It's fun.  :)

-David

"Zi hiwejnat zodZaraDatsi pat Zi mirejsat dZaCajani sUlo."
"The future's uncertain and the end is always near."
                --Jim Morrison

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