Carsten Becker wrote:
> Hey all!
>
> I've got some phonetics-related questions:
>
> 1. What are "sonorants"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonorant
Any phone more sonorous than a voiced fricative:
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsTheSonorityScale.htm
> 2. Why is the [r\] at the end of words (American English) often
> transcribed as [@`] in dictionaries? Where is the difference? I know the
> little hook i sf ro indicating rhoticity -- are there other
> vowels/consonants/sounds in general that can be rhoticized?
Any vowel can be rhoticized. If you try to pronounce the English word
"ear" (as in rhotic dialects) as a single segment, you end up with
something like /i`/ or maybe /I`/. It involves forming a channel in the
middle of the tongue and retracting the tongue root, I think.
> 3. Did clicks arise through affricates? I don't know why affricates,
> but something in my mind tells me so.
AFAIK, nobody knows where clicks came from in languages that have them.
No language with clicks is known to descend from a language without.