Re: Click consonants

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 16:46:44 -0600, Eddy Ohlms <etg@...>
wrote:

>> Cán be phonemic. I don't think we have enough examples of click languages
>> to generalize that the distinction between k! and g! múst be phonemic in
>> any language with clicks. There certainly are examples of languages that
>> don't distinguish between voiced and voiceless stops, but those languages
>> don't have clicks. Just because an example of a particular language feature
>> isn't known doesn't mean that it's humanly impossible (a general problem
>> with so-called "language universals"). And even though Qiira Triicha isn't
>> intended as a human language, I don't think that it'd be unnatural for a
>> human language to lack a distinction between voiced and voiceless click
>> accompaniments if it also fails to distinguish between voiced and voiceless
>> stops in general.
>
>No, if your language distinguishes voicing, the clicks should distinguish voicing. If
>there is aspiration, clicks vary there, too. The click distinctions usually parallel
>the distinctions in the rest of the language.
Then if your language _doesn't_ distinguish voicing, the clicks shouldn't
distinguish voicing either.

Replies