Re: Click consonants

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

>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.
I think it's fairer to say they *may* distinguish voicing, rather than
*should*. I think this assumes that a language maximally fills all
available slots, but if it's intended to be natlangy, it *might not* - for
instance, a language may distinguish voiced, vls aspirated, and ejective
stops, but it may have gaps - statistically the tendency (and that's all
that 'Phonemic Universals' really are) is to lack a labial ejective and /
or a voiced velar (or uvular).

So a language might have voiced anterior stops /b, d/ but lack both /g/ and
voiced clicks. Since only a handful of click languages have survived, I
don't think one can really make generalizations about what an unrelated
language containing clicks might have in terms of accompaniments.

It's probably best to compare the dorsal stops available in a language to
the click accompaniments it manifests. For instance, Dahalo, a Cushitic
language that contains clicks has voiceless, prenasalized voiceless,
voiced, prenasalized voiced, and ejective velar stops /k, g, k', Nk, Ng/,
plus the same set labialized /kw, gw, k',  Nkw, Ngw, k'w/(but no velar
nasal at all!), but only voiced and voiceless nasalized clicks, both plain
and labialized /N|, N_o|, N|w, N_o|w/. Dahalo also is limited in having
only dental clicks, so its inventory is quite impoverished compared to
other click languages.

Hadza has voiceless aspirated & unaspirated, voiced, prenasalized vls
aspirated & voiced, and ejective velar stops plus a velar nasal, and all
also labialized *except* for the prenasalized stops, /kh, k, g, k', N, Nkh,
Ng, khw, kw, gw, k'w, Nw/. In contrast it has only three click
accompaniments, voiceless (unaspirated), nasalized, and voiceless nasalized
plus glottal stop /k|, N|, N_o|'/. Hadza has dental, alveolar, and lateral
clicks, similar to the Nguni Bantu languages (Xhosa, Zulu, etc), though
some speakers are reported to have a flapped allophone of the alveolar
click, in which the tongue hits the floor of the mouth after its alveolar
contact is released.

!Xoo, on the other hand, is typical of the southern Khoisan languages in
having a much larger inventory of both dorsal stops - both velar and
uvular - and click accompaniments, although it actually has *more* click
accompaniments than plain dorsals, /kh, k, g, k', kx', gkh, gkx' (the last
two are prevoiced stops), qh, q, G, q', Gqh/ vs clicks /k|h, k|, g|, k|x,
k|x', gk|x, gk|x', q|h, q|, G|, q|', gq|h, Gq|h, N|, N_o|, 'N|, N_o|'/. !
Xoo also has a large set of clicks, labial, dental, alveolar, palatal, and
lateral. Surprisingly, labial clicks only occur in a few Southern Khoisan
languages and in the now-defunct Damin.

Bfowol

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