Re: Click consonants

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 23:21:32 -0600, Eddy Ohlms <etg@...>
wrote:

>They must be mentioned explicitly. The difference between k! and g!, for example,
>is phonemic. To not mention the accompaniments would be like not mentioning the
>different the other consonants other than points of articulation and airstream
>mechanism, which is all you'll get if you leave out the accompaniment.
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.

If the difference isn't phonemic in a particular language, it might be nice
to specify whether the accompaniment is voiced or voiceless, velar or
uvular, aspirated or unaspirated, in free variation, etc., but that's a
matter of how much detail the author wants to put into the phonological
description. Some languages distinguish between [t_d] (dental), [t_-]
(alveolar), and [t`] (retroflex), but that doesn't mean that you need to
specify whether your language's /t/ is dental or alveolar if the difference
isn't phonemic.

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