Bilabial clicks

--- In conlang@y..., David Peterson <DigitalScream@A...> wrote:
> Also, about clicks.  They say, for example, that a bilabial
> click is when you make the kissing sound.  But what about when you
> make a popping sound with both your lips?  They're two very
> different sounds, yet...represented by the same symbol?  The same
> goes for the alveolar and post-alveolar clicks.
As others have noted, the bilabial click in Khoisan languages
is similar to a kiss, though the lips are not necessarily
rounded or protruded.

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 (fortis
= muscular tension, though this is a somewhat nebulous term in
phonetics) - not entirely sure if it is velaric ingressive
(a click) or velaric egressive, though I'm inclined to think
the latter. If it is, then the ad hoc extended IPA symbol for
it could be the bullseye (circle with dot in middle), plus an
upward pointing arrow, to indicate egressive airstream.

IPA also doesn't do a very satisfactory job in distinguishing
between alveolar and postalveolar (or retroflex) clicks. 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. The dental click was an
inverted <t>, alveolar was a downward-pointing arrow, retroflex
was Greek <psi>; voiced alveolar & retroflex were inverted
symbols, dental was the <gamma> (now = IPA vcd velar fricative);
nasal clicks were modified variants of <n>.

I think in terms of allowing for possible but as yet undocumented
sounds the IPA should have devised a diacritic indicating 'velaric
ingressive' (or better, velaric ingressive AND velaric egressive)
would have been a better solution, but....

Bfowol

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