Click consonant
ʘ ǀ ǁ ǂ ǃ 𝼊 | |
---|---|
Click releases | |
In Unicode | U+0298 ʘ LATIN LETTER BILABIAL CLICK U+01C0 ǀ LATIN LETTER DENTAL CLICK |
Different from | |
Different from | U+007C | VERTICAL LINE U+2016 ‖ DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE U+0021 ! EXCLAMATION MARK |
Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as
Anatomically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue (in technical terminology, clicks have a lingual ingressive airstream mechanism). The forward closure is then released,[note 1] producing what may be the loudest consonants in the language, although in some languages such as Hadza and Sandawe, clicks can be more subtle and may even be mistaken for ejectives.
Phonetics and IPA notation
Click consonants occur at six principal places of articulation. The
- The easiest clicks for English speakers are the dental clicks written with a single pipe, ⟨ǀ⟩. These are sharp (high-pitched) squeaky sounds made by sucking on the front teeth. A simple dental click is used in English to express pity or to shame someone, or to call a cat or other animal, and is written tut! in British English and tsk! in American English. In many cultures around the Mediterranean a simple dental click is used for "no" in answer to a direct question. They are written with the letter c in Zulu and Xhosa.
- Next most familiar to English speakers are the lateral clicks, which are written with a double pipe, ⟨ǁ⟩. They are also squeaky sounds, though less sharp than [ǀ], made by sucking on the molars on either side (or both sides) of the mouth. A simple lateral click is made in English to get a horse moving, and is conventionally written tchick!. They are written with the letter x in Zulu and Xhosa.
- Then there are the labial clicks, written with a bull's eye, ⟨ʘ⟩. These are lip-smacking sounds, but often without the pursing of the lips found in a kiss, that occur in words in only a few languages.
The above clicks sound like affricates, in that they involve a lot of friction. The next two families of clicks are more abrupt sounds that do not have this friction.
- With the alveolar clicks, written with an exclamation mark, ⟨ǃ⟩, the tip of the tongue is pulled down abruptly and forcefully from the roof of the mouth, sometimes using a lot of jaw motion, and making a hollow pop! like a cork being pulled from an empty bottle. Something like these sounds may be used for a 'clip-clop' sound as noted above. These sounds can be quite loud. They are written with the letter q in Zulu and Xhosa.
- The palatal clicks, ⟨ǂ⟩, are made with a flat tongue that is pulled backward rather than downward, and are sharper cracking sounds than the [ǃ] clicks, like sharply snapped fingers. They are not found in Zulu but are very common in the San languages of southern Africa.
- Finally, the Central !Kung. The tongue is curled back in the mouth, and they are both fricative and hollow sounding, but descriptions of these sounds vary between sources. This may reflect dialect differences. They are perhaps most commonly written ⟨‼⟩, but that is an ad hoc transcription. The expected IPA letter is ⟨𝼊⟩ (⟨ǃ⟩ with retroflex tail), and the IPA supported the addition of that letter to Unicode.
Technically, these IPA letters transcribe only the forward articulation of the click, not the entire consonant. As the Handbook states,[1]
Since any click involves a velar or uvular closure [as well], it is possible to symbolize factors such as voicelessness, voicing or nasality of the click by combining the click symbol with the appropriate velar or uvular symbol: [k͡ǂ ɡ͡ǂ ŋ͡ǂ], [q͡ǃ].[2]
Thus technically [ǂ] is not a consonant, but only one part of the articulation of a consonant, and one may speak of "ǂ-clicks" to mean any of the various click consonants that share the [ǂ] place of articulation.[3] In practice, however, the simple letter ⟨ǂ⟩ has long been used as an abbreviation for [k͡ǂ], and in that role it is sometimes seen combined with diacritics for voicing (e.g. ⟨ǂ̬⟩ for [ɡ͡ǂ]), nasalization (e.g. ⟨ǂ̃⟩ for [ŋ͡ǂ]), etc. These differing transcription conventions may reflect differing theoretical analyses of the nature of click consonants, or attempts to address common misunderstandings of clicks.
Languages with clicks
Southern Africa
Clicks occur in all three
words.East Africa
Three languages in East Africa use clicks: Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, and Dahalo, an endangered South Cushitic language of Kenya that has clicks in only a few dozen words. It is thought the latter may remain from an episode of language shift.[citation needed]
Damin
The only non-African language known to have clicks as regular speech sounds is Damin, a ritual code once used by speakers of Lardil in Australia. In addition, one consonant in Damin is the egressive equivalent of a click, using the tongue to compress the air in the mouth for an outward (egressive) "spurt".[5][6]
Use
Spread of clicks from loanwords
Once clicks are borrowed into a language as regular speech sounds, they may spread to native words, as has happened due to
Marginal usage of clicks
Scattered clicks are found in ideophones and mimesis in other languages, such as Kongo /ᵑǃ/, Mijikenda /ᵑǀ/ and Hadza /ᵑʘʷ/ (Hadza does not otherwise have labial clicks). Ideophones often use phonemic distinctions not found in normal vocabulary.
English and many other languages may use bare click releases in interjections, without an accompanying rear release or transition into a vowel, such as the dental "tsk-tsk" sound used to express disapproval, or the lateral tchick used with horses. In a number of languages ranging from the central Mediterranean to Iran,[8] a bare dental click release accompanied by tipping the head upwards signifies "no". Libyan Arabic apparently has three such sounds.[citation needed] A voiceless nasal back-released velar click [ʞ] is used throughout Africa for backchanneling. This sound starts off as a typical click, but the action is reversed and it is the rear velar or uvular closure that is released, drawing in air from the throat and nasal passages.
Clicks occasionally turn up elsewhere, as in the special
Speakers of
- [tʰien i tsʰak ᵑǃ¡o] 天上一隻鵝 'a goose in the sky'
- [ti ha i tsʰak ᵑǃ¡a] 地下一隻鴨 'a duck on the ground'
- [ᵑǃ¡o saŋ ᵑǃ¡o tʰan, ᵑǃ¡o pʰau ᵑǃ¡o] 鵝生鵝蛋鵝孵鵝 'a goose lays a goose egg, a goose hatches a goose'
- [ᵑǃ¡a saŋ ᵑǃ¡a tʰan, ᵑǃ¡a pʰau ᵑǃ¡a] 鴨生鴨蛋鴨孵鴨 'a duck lays a duck egg, a duck hatches a duck'
where the /ŋ/ onsets are all pronounced [ᵑǃ¡].[10]
Occasionally other languages are claimed to have click sounds in general vocabulary. This is usually a misnomer for ejective consonants, which are found across much of the world.
Position in word
For the most part, the Southern African
-initial clicks within roots. In no language does a click close a syllable or end a word, but since the languages of the world that happen to have clicks consist mostly of CV syllables and allow at most only a limited set of consonants (such as a nasal or a glottal stop) to close a syllable or end a word, most consonants share the distribution of clicks in these languages.Number of click-types in languages
Most languages of the Khoesan families (Tuu, Kxʼa and Khoe) have four click types: { ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ } or variants thereof, though a few have three or five, the last supplemented with either bilabial { ʘ } or retroflex { 𝼊 }. Hadza and Sandawe in Tanzania have three, { ǀ ǁ ǃ }. Yeyi is the only Bantu language with four, { ǀ ǁ ǃ ǂ }, while Xhosa and Zulu have three, { ǀ ǁ ǃ }, and most other Bantu languages with clicks have fewer.
Types of clicks
Like other consonants, clicks can be described using four parameters: place of articulation, manner of articulation, phonation (including glottalisation) and airstream mechanism. As noted above, clicks necessarily involve at least two closures, which in some cases operate partially independently: an anterior articulation traditionally represented by the special click symbol in the IPA—and a posterior articulation traditionally transcribed for convenience as oral or nasal, voiced or voiceless, though such features actually apply to the entire consonant. The literature also describes a contrast between velar and uvular rear articulations for some languages.
In some languages that have been reported to make this distinction, such as Nǁng, all clicks have a uvular rear closure, and the clicks explicitly described as uvular are in fact cases where the uvular closure is independently audible: contours of a click into a pulmonic or ejective component, in which the click has two release bursts, the forward (click-type) and then the rearward (uvular) component. "Velar" clicks in these languages have only a single release burst, that of the forward release, and the release of the rear articulation isn't audible. However, in other languages all clicks are velar, and a few languages, such as Taa, have a true velar–uvular distinction that depends on the place rather than the timing of rear articulation and that is audible in the quality of the vowel.
Regardless, in most of the literature the stated place of the click is the anterior articulation (called the release or influx), whereas the manner is ascribed to the posterior articulation (called the accompaniment or efflux). The anterior articulation defines the click type and is written with the IPA letter for the click (dental ⟨ǀ⟩, alveolar ⟨ǃ⟩, etc.), whereas the traditional term 'accompaniment' conflates the categories of manner (nasal, affricated), phonation (voiced, aspirated, breathy voiced, glottalised), as well as any change in the airstream with the release of the posterior articulation (pulmonic, ejective), all of which are transcribed with additional letters or diacritics, as in the nasal alveolar click, ⟨ǃŋ⟩ or ⟨ᵑǃ⟩ or—to take an extreme example—the voiced (uvular) ejective alveolar click, ⟨ᶢǃ͡qʼ⟩.
The size of click inventories ranges from as few as three (in
Clicks appear more
Transcription
The five click places of articulation with dedicated symbols in the
The most populous languages with clicks, Zulu and Xhosa, use the letters c, q, x, by themselves and in digraphs, to write click consonants. Most Khoisan languages, on the other hand (with the notable exceptions of Naro and Sandawe), use a more iconic system based on the pipe ⟨|⟩. (The exclamation point for the "retroflex" click was originally a pipe with a subscript dot, along the lines of ṭ, ḍ, ṇ used to transcribe the retroflex consonants of India.) There are also two main conventions for the second letter of the digraph as well: voicing may be written with g and uvular affrication with x, or voicing with d and affrication with g (a convention of Afrikaans). In two orthographies of Juǀʼhoan, for example, voiced /ᶢǃ/ is written g! or dq, and /ᵏǃ͡χ/ !x or qg. In languages without /ᵏǃ͡χ/, such as Zulu, /ᶢǃ/ may be written gq.
labial | laminal | apical | subapical | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
dental | palatal | alveolar | lateral | retroflex | ||
Lepsius (1855) | ǀ | ǀ́ | ǀ̣ | ǀǀ | ||
Doke (1926) | ʇ | 🡣 a | ʗ | ʖ | ψ | |
Beach (1938) | ʘ | ʇ | 𝼋 | ʗ | ʖ | |
Bantuist | pc | c | v ç tc qc b |
q | x | |
IPA | ʘ | ǀ | ǂ | ǃ | ǁ | 𝼊 |
- additional or modified lettersfor voiced and nasal clicks, but they did not catch on.
- which?] where they have been written ⟨tc⟩, ⟨ç⟩ and ⟨qc⟩, respectively. In the 19th century, they were sometimes written ⟨v⟩, which might be source of the Doke letter ⟨🡣⟩.
There are a few less-well-attested articulations. A reported subapical retroflex articulation ⟨𝼊⟩ in Grootfontein !Kung[note 4] turns out to be alveolar with lateral release, ⟨ǃ𐞷⟩; Ekoka !Kung has a fricated alveolar click with an s-like release, provisionally transcribed ⟨ǃ͡s⟩; and Sandawe has a "slapped" alveolar click, provisionally transcribed ⟨ǃ¡⟩ (in turn, the lateral clicks in Sandawe are more abrupt and less noisy than in southern Africa). However, the Khoisan languages are poorly attested, and it is quite possible that, as they become better described, more click articulations will be found.
Formerly when a click consonant was transcribed, two symbols were used, one for each articulation, and connected with a tie bar. This is because a click such as [ɢ͡ǀ] was analysed as a voiced uvular rear articulation [ɢ] pronounced simultaneously with the forward ingressive release [ǀ]. The symbols may be written in either order, depending on the analysis: ⟨ɢ͡ǀ⟩ or ⟨ǀ͡ɢ⟩. However, a tie bar was not often used in practice, and when the manner is tenuis (a simple [k]), it was often omitted as well. That is, ⟨ǂ⟩ = ⟨kǂ⟩ = ⟨ǂk⟩ = ⟨k͡ǂ⟩ = ⟨ǂ͡k⟩. Regardless, elements that do not overlap with the forward release are usually written according to their temporal order: Prenasalisation is always written first (⟨ɴɢ͡ǀ⟩ = ⟨ɴǀ͡ɢ⟩ = ⟨ɴǀ̬⟩), and the non-lingual part of a contour is always written second (⟨k͡ǀʼqʼ⟩ = ⟨ǀ͡kʼqʼ⟩ = ⟨ǀ͡qʼ⟩).
However, it is common to analyse clicks as simplex segments, despite the fact that the front and rear articulations are independent, and to use diacritics to indicate the rear articulation and the accompaniment. At first this tended to be ⟨ᵏǀ, ᶢǀ, ᵑǀ⟩ for ⟨k͡ǀ, ɡ͡ǀ, ŋ͡ǀ⟩, based on the belief that the rear articulation was velar; but as it has become clear that the rear articulation is often uvular or even pharyngeal even when there is no velar–uvular contrast, voicing and nasalisation diacritics more in keeping with the IPA have started to appear: ⟨ǀ̥, ǀ̬, ǀ̃, ŋǀ̬⟩ for ⟨ᵏǀ, ᶢǀ, ᵑǀ, ŋᶢǀ⟩.
Tenuis | Aspirated | Voiced | Nasal | Delayed ("uvular") | True uvular | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tie bars | k͡ǀ | k͡ǀʰ | ɡ͡ǀ | ŋ͡ǀ | ǀ͡k, ǀ͡kʰ, ǀ͡ɡ, ǀ͡ŋ | q͡ǀ, ǀ͡q etc. |
Digraphs | kǀ | kǀʰ | ɡǀ | ŋǀ | ǀk, ǀkʰ, ǀɡ, ǀŋ | qǀ, ǀq etc. |
Superscripts | ᵏǀ | ᵏǀʰ | ᶢǀ | ᵑǀ | ǀᵏ, ǀᵏʰ, ǀᶢ, ǀᵑ | qǀ, ǀq etc. |
Diacritics | ǀ̥ | ǀʰ | ǀ̬ | ǀ̬̃ | NA | NA |
In practical orthography, the voicing or nasalisation is sometimes given the anterior place of articulation: dc for ᶢǀ and mʘ for ᵑʘ, for example.
In the literature on Damin, the clicks are transcribed by adding ⟨!⟩ to the homorganic nasal: ⟨m!, nh!, n!, rn!⟩.
Places of articulation
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Slapped | Retroflex | Domed | Palatal | Lateral | Linguolabial | Velar |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ʘ | ǀ | ǃ | ǃ¡ | 𝼊 | ǂᶴ (𝼋) | ǂ | ǁ | ǀ̼ | ʞ |
(allophonic) | (paralexical only) |
Languages illustrating each of these articulations are listed below. Given the poor state of documentation of Khoisan languages, it is quite possible that additional places of articulation will turn up. No language is known to contrast more than five.
Click place inventory |
Languages | Notes |
---|---|---|
1 release, variable ǀ ~ ǁ | Dahalo | Various nasal clicks only. |
1 release, variable ǀ ~ ǃ | Sotho, Swazi | In Sotho the clicks tend to be alveolar, in Swazi dental. |
1 release, variable ǀ ~ ǃ ~ ǁ or ǂ | Gciriku |
Tend to be dental. |
3 releases, ǀ, ǂ, ǁ | Kwadi | ǂ and ǁ not found with all manners, but these may be accidental gaps, as Kwadi is poorly attested |
3 releases, ǀ, ǃ, ǁ | Sandawe, Hadza, Xhosa, Zulu | In Sandawe, ǃ is often "slapped" [ǃ¡]. |
3–4 releases, ʘ, ǀ, (ǃ,) ǁ | ǁXegwi | ǃ reacquired in loans |
4 releases, ǀ, ǂ, ǃ, ǁ | Juǀʼhoan |
|
4 releases, ǀ, ǂᶴ, ǃ, ǁ | Ekoka !Kung |
|
5 releases, ʘ, ǀ, ǂ, ǃ, ǁ | ||
5 releases, ǀ, ǂ, ǃ, 𝼊, ǁ | Grootfontein !Kung |
|
5 releases, ʘ, ʘ↑, ǀ, ǃ, 𝼊 | Damin | Aside from /ʘ↑/, which is not technically a click, all are nasal. |
Extra-linguistically,
The exact place of the alveolar clicks varies between languages. The lateral, for example, is alveolar in Khoekhoe but postalveolar or even palatal in Sandawe; the central is alveolar in Nǀuu but postalveolar in Juǀʼhoan.[17]
Names found in the literature
The terms for the click types were originally developed by Bleek in 1862.[18] Since then there has been some conflicting variation. However, apart from "cerebral" (retroflex), which was found to be an inaccurate label when true retroflex clicks were discovered, Bleek's terms are still considered normative today. Here are the terms used in some of the main references.
Click type | Bleek (1862) | Doke (1926) | IPA (1928) | Beach (1938) | IPA (1949) | IPA (1989) | Unicode | Miller et al. (2009)[19] | Vossen (2013)[20] | other |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ǀ | dental | dental | dental | dental affricative | dental | dental | dental | denti-pharyngeal | dental | alveolar affricated; denti-alveolar; apico-lamino-dental |
ǃ | cerebral | palato-alveolar | cerebral | alveolar implosive | retroflex | (post-)alveolar | retroflex | central alveo-uvular | alveolar | palatal; palatal retroflex; apico-palatal |
ǁ | lateral | lateral | alveolar lateral | lateral affricative | lateral | (alveolar) lateral | lateral | lateral alveo-uvular | lateral-alveolar | post-alveolar lateral; lateral apico-alveo-palatal |
ǂ | palatal | alveolar | velar | denti-alveolar implosive | velar | palatoalveolar | alveolar | palato-pharyngeal | palatal | alveolar instantaneous; dental |
ʘ | bilabial | bilabial | labio-uvular | bilabial | labial |
The dental, lateral and bilabial clicks are rarely confused, but the palatal and alveolar clicks frequently have conflicting names in older literature, and non-standard terminology is fossilized in Unicode. However, since Ladefoged & Traill (1984) clarified the places of articulation, the terms listed under Vosser (2013) in the table above have become standard, apart from such details as whether in a particular language ǃ and ǁ are alveolar or postalveolar, or whether the rear articulation is velar, uvular or pharyngeal, which again varies between languages (or may even be contrastive within a language).
Manners of articulation
Click manners are often called click accompaniments or effluxes, but both terms have met with objections on theoretical grounds.
There is a great variety of click manners, both simplex and complex, the latter variously analysed as consonant clusters or contours. With so few click languages, and so little study of them, it is also unclear to what extent clicks in different languages are equivalent. For example, the [ǃkˀ] of Khoekhoe, [ǃkˀ ~ ŋˀǃk] of Sandawe and [ŋ̊ǃˀ ~ ŋǃkˀ] of Hadza may be essentially the same phone; no language distinguishes them, and the differences in transcription may have more to do with the approach of the linguist than with actual differences in the sounds. Such suspected allophones/allographs are listed on a common row in the table below.
Some Khoisan languages are typologically unusual in allowing mixed voicing in non-click consonant clusters/contours, such as dt͡sʼk͡xʼ, so it is not surprising that they would allow mixed voicing in clicks as well. This may be an effect of epiglottalised voiced consonants, because voicing is incompatible with epiglottalisation.
Phonation
As do other consonants, clicks vary in
All languages have nasal clicks, and all but Dahalo and Damin also have oral clicks. All languages but Damin have at least one phonation contrast as well.
Complex clicks
Clicks may be pronounced with a third place of articulation, glottal. A
Various languages also have prenasalised clicks, which may be analysed as consonant sequences. Sotho, for example, allows a syllabic nasal before its three clicks, as in nnqane 'the other side' (prenasalised nasal) and seqhenqha 'hunk'.
There is ongoing discussion as to how the distinction between what were historically described as 'velar' and 'uvular' clicks is best described. The 'uvular' clicks are only found in some languages, and have an extended pronunciation that suggests that they are more complex than the simple ('velar') clicks, which are found in all. Nakagawa (1996) describes the extended clicks in
These contour clicks may be linguo-pulmonic, that is, they may transition from a click (lingual) articulation to a normal pulmonic consonant like [ should be here [ǂ͡qxʼ] or [ǂ͡kχʼ]?] in any known language, they are phonetically quite distinct (Miller 2011).
Implosive clicks, i.e. velar [ɠ͡ʘ ɠ͡ǀ ɠ͡ǃ ɠ͡ǂ ɠ͡ǁ], uvular [ʛ͡ʘ ʛ͡ǀ ʛ͡ǃ ʛ͡ǂ ʛ͡ǁ], and de facto front-closed palatal [ʄ͡ʘ ʄ͡ǀ ʄ͡ǃ ʄ͡ǁ] are not only possible but easier to produce than modally voiced clicks. However, they are not attested in any language.[21]
Apart from Dahalo, Damin and many of the Bantu languages (Yeyi and Xhosa being exceptions), 'click' languages have glottalized nasal clicks. Contour clicks are restricted to southern Africa, but are very common there: they are found in all members of the Tuu, Kxʼa and Khoe families, as well as in the Bantu language Yeyi.
Variation among languages
In a comparative study of clicks across various languages, using her own field work as well as phonetic descriptions and data by other field researchers, Miller (2011) posits 21 types of clicks that contrast in manner or airstream.
- Taa (ǃXóõ) and Nǁng (Nǀuu) are Tuu languages, from the two branches of that family.
- ǂʼAmkoe (ǂHoan) and Juǀʼhoan (ǃKung) are Kxʼa languages, from the two branches of that family.
- Gǀui (Gǁana) are Khoe languages, from the two branches of that family.
(all spoken primarily in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana; Khoekhoe is similar to Korana except it has lost ejective /ᵏꞰ͡χʼ/)
- Sandawe and Hadza are language isolates spoken in Tanzania
- Dahalo is a Cushitic language of Kenya
- Xhosa and Yeyi are Bantu languages, from the two geographic areas of that family that have acquired clicks.
(Zulu is similar to Xhosa apart from not having /ᵑꞰˀ/)
Each language below is illustrated with Ʞ as a placeholder for the different click types. Under each language are the orthography (in italics, with old forms in parentheses), the researchers' transcription (in ⟨angle brackets⟩), or allophonic variation (in [brackets]). Some languages also have labialised or prenasalised clicks as well as those listed below.
Language | Tuu | Kxʼa | Khoe | Sandawe | Hadza | Cushitic | Bantu | Australian | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Taa | Nǁng | ǂʼAmkoe | Juǀʼhoan[note 6] | Korana | Gǀui | Dahalo | Xhosa | Yeyi | Damin | |||||
Manner | ʘ, ǂ, ǃ, ǁ, ǀ | ǂ, ǃ, ǁ, ǀ | ǃ, ǁ, ǀ | ǀ | ǃ, ǁ, ǀ | ǂ, ǃ, ǁ, ǀ | ʘ, 𝼊, ǃ, ǀ | |||||||
Simple oral click |
Tenuis | /ᵏꞰ/ | ⟨Ʞ⟩* | ⟨Ʞ⟩ | [ᵏꞰ] | Ʞ (c, ç, q, x) | Ʞg | ⟨kꞰ⟩ | c, q, x | c, q, x (Ʞ) | c, q, x | ⟨Ʞ⟩ | ||
Voiced | /ᶢꞰ/ | ⟨gꞰ⟩* | ⟨ᶢꞰ⟩ | [ᶢꞰ] | gꞰ (dq etc.) | ⟨gꞰ⟩ | gq etc. [ᶢꞰ ~ ŋᶢꞰ] |
⟨gꞰ⟩ | ||||||
Aspirated | /ᵏꞰʰ/ | ⟨Ʞh⟩* | ⟨Ʞʰ⟩ | [ᵏꞰʰ] | Ʞh (qh etc.) | Ʞkh | ⟨kꞰh⟩ | qh etc. | qh etc. (Ʞh) | qh etc. | ⟨Ʞh⟩ (= Ʞx ?) | |||
Breathy-voiced | /ᶢꞰʱ/ | ⟨gꞰh⟩* | gꞰh (dqh etc.) [ᶢꞰʱ ~ ᶢꞰˠ] |
gq etc.[note 7] | ||||||||||
Simple
nasal click |
Voiceless | /ᵑ̊Ʞ/ | ⟨nhꞰ⟩* [ŋ̊ᵑꞰ] |
|||||||||||
Voiced | /ᵑꞰ/ | ⟨nꞰ⟩* [ŋ̈ᵑꞰ] |
⟨ᵑꞰ⟩ | [ᵑꞰ] | nꞰ (nq etc.) | Ʞn | ⟨ŋꞰ⟩ | nq etc. | nq etc. (nꞰ) | /ᵑǀ/ | nq etc. | ⟨ŋꞰ⟩ | ⟨Nǃ⟩ | |
(Delayed) aspiration (prenasalised between vowels) |
/ᵑ̊Ʞʰʱ/ | ⟨Ʞhh⟩ [ŋ̊↓Ʞh] |
⟨ᵑ̊Ʞʰ⟩ | [ᵑ̊Ʞʱ ~ ŋᵑ̊Ʞʱ] | Ʞʼh (qʼh etc.) | Ʞh | ⟨ŋꞰh⟩ | |||||||
Breathy-voiced | /ᵑꞰʱ/ | ⟨nꞰhh⟩ | nꞰh (nqh etc.) | ngq etc.[note 8] | ||||||||||
Preglottalised nasal click | /ˀᵑꞰ/ | ⟨ʼnꞰ⟩* | [ʔᵑꞰ] | (in Ekoka) | ||||||||||
Glottalised
click |
Oral / velar ejective | /ᵏꞰʼ/ | ⟨Ʞʼ⟩* | ⟨kꞰʼ⟩ | ⟨Ʞʼ⟩ | |||||||||
Creaky-voiced oral | /ᶢꞰʼ/ | ⟨gꞰʼ⟩* | ||||||||||||
Nasal (silent initially, prenasalised after vowels) |
/ᵑ̊Ʞˀ/ | ⟨Ʞʼʼ⟩ | ⟨ᵑ̊Ʞˀ⟩ | [Ʞˀ ~ ŋˀꞰ] | Ʞʼ (qʼ etc.) (w/ nasal vowels) |
Ʞ | ⟨kꞰʔ⟩ (ŋ̊Ʞʔ) | qʼ etc. [Ʞˀʔ ~ ŋʔꞰˀ] |
qq etc. (Ʞʼ ~ nꞰʼ) |
/ᵑǀˀ/ | nkq etc. ?[23] | ⟨ŋꞰʼ⟩ | ||
Nasal (prenasalised initially) | /ᵑꞰˀ/ | ⟨nꞰʼʼ⟩ | ||||||||||||
Pulmonic
contour |
Tenuis stop | /Ʞ͡q/ | ⟨Ʞq⟩ | ⟨Ʞq⟩ | [Ʞq] | ⟨qꞰ⟩ | ||||||||
Voiced (and prenasalised) | /ᶢꞰ͡ɢ/ | ⟨gꞰq⟩ [ᶰꞰɢ ~ Ʞɢ] |
[Ʞɢ][note 9] | ([ᶰꞰɢ])[note 10] | ⟨ɢꞰ⟩ [ᶰꞰɢ] |
|||||||||
Aspirated stop | /Ʞ͡qʰ/ | ⟨Ʞqh⟩ | ⟨Ʞqʰ⟩ | [Ʞqʰ] | ⟨qꞰh⟩ | |||||||||
Breathy-voiced | /ᶢꞰ͡ɢʱ/ | ⟨gꞰqh⟩ | ||||||||||||
Voiceless fricative | /ᵏꞰ͡χ/ | ⟨Ʞx⟩ | ⟨Ʞχ⟩ | [Ʞq͡χ] | Ʞx (qg etc.) | ⟨qꞰχ⟩ | ⟨Ʞx⟩ (?) | |||||||
Voiced fricative (prenasalised) | /ᶢꞰ͡ʁ/ | ⟨gꞰx⟩ [ᶢꞰ͡χ ~ ɴᶢꞰ͡ʁ] |
gꞰx (dqg etc.) | |||||||||||
Ejective
contour |
Ejective stop | /Ʞ͡qʼ/ | ⟨Ʞqʼ⟩ | [Ʞqʼ] | [Ʞqʼ] | ⟨qꞰʼ⟩ | ||||||||
Voiced ejective stop | /ᶢꞰ͡qʼ/ | ⟨gꞰqʼ⟩ | ||||||||||||
Ejective fricative | /Ʞ͡χʼ/ | ⟨Ʞχʼ⟩ | [Ʞq͡χʼ] | Ʞkhʼ | ⟨Ʞqʼ⟩ | |||||||||
Heterorganic affricate / epiglottalised |
/Ʞ͡kxʼ/ | ⟨Ʞqxʼ⟩ | Ʞk (qgʼ etc.) [Ʞᵸ] |
⟨qꞰχʼ⟩ | ||||||||||
Voiced heterorganic affricate / epiglottalised |
/ᶢꞰ͡kxʼ/ | ⟨gꞰqxʼ⟩ | gꞰk (dqgʼ etc.) [ᶢꞰˤ] |
|||||||||||
Egressive[note 11] | (Voiceless "spurt"; labial only) | /ʘ↑/ | ⟨pʼ⟩ | |||||||||||
IPA | Taa | Nǁng | ǂʼAmkoe | Juǀʼhoan | Korana | Gǀui | Sandawe | Hadza | Dahalo | Xhosa | Yeyi | Damin |
Yeyi also has prenasalised /ŋᶢꞰ/. The original researchers believe that [Ʞʰ] and [Ʞχ] are allophones.
A DoBeS (2008) study of the Western ǃXoo dialect of Taa found several new manners: creaky voiced (the voiced equivalent of glottalised oral), breathy-voiced nasal, prenasalised glottalised (the voiced equivalent of glottalised) and a (pre)voiced ejective. These extra voiced clicks reflect Western ǃXoo morphology, where many nouns form their plural by voicing their initial consonant. DoBeS analyses most Taa clicks as clusters, leaving nine basic manners (marked with asterisks in the table). This comes close to Miller's distinction between simple and contour clicks, shaded light and medium grey in the table.
Phonotactics
Languages of the southern African Khoisan families only permit clicks at the beginning of a word root. However, they also restrict other classes of consonant, such as ejectives and affricates, to root-initial position. The Bantu languages, Hadza and Sandawe allow clicks within roots.
In some languages, all click consonants within known roots are the same phoneme, as in Hadza cikiringcingca /ǀikiɺiN.ǀiN.ǀa/ 'pinkie finger', which has three tenuis dental clicks. Other languages are known to have the occasional root with different clicks, as in Xhosa ugqwanxa /uᶢ̊ǃʱʷaᵑǁa/ 'black ironwood', which has a slack-voiced alveolar click and a nasal lateral click.
No natural language allows clicks at the ends of syllables or words, but then no languages with clicks allows many consonants at all in those positions. Similarly, clicks are not found in underlying consonant clusters apart from /Cw/ (and, depending on the analysis, /Cχ/), as languages with clicks do not have other consonant clusters than that. Due to vowel elision, however, there are cases where clicks are pronounced in cross-linguistically common types of consonant clusters, such as Xhosa [sᵑǃɔɓilɛ] Snqobile, from Sinqobile (a name), and [isǁʰɔsa] isXhosa, from isiXhosa (the Xhosa language).[24]
Like other articulatorily complex consonants, clicks tend to be found in
The back-vowel constraint
In several languages, including
Abrupt release |
Noisy release | |
---|---|---|
ballistic tongue retraction & back-vowel constraint |
ǃ | ǁ, ʘ |
no retraction, no constraint | ǂ | ǀ |
Miller and colleagues (2003) used
Languages do not all behave alike. In
Click genesis and click loss
One genetic study concluded that clicks, which occur in the languages of the genetically divergent populations Hadza and !Kung, may be an ancient element of human language.
On the other side of the equation, several non-endangered languages in vigorous use demonstrate click loss. For example, the East Kalahari languages have lost clicks from a large percentage of their vocabulary, presumably due to Bantu influence. As a rule, a click is replaced by a consonant with close to the manner of articulation of the click and the place of articulation of the forward release: alveolar click releases (the [ǃ] family) tend to mutate into a velar stop or affricate, such as [k], [ɡ], [ŋ], [k͡x]; palatal clicks ([ǂ] etc.) tend to mutate into a palatal stop such as [c], [ ɟ], [ ɲ], [cʼ], or a post-alveolar affricate [tʃ], [dʒ]; and dental clicks ([ǀ] etc.) tend to mutate into an alveolar affricate [ts].[citation needed]
Difficulty
Clicks are often presented as difficult sounds to articulate within words. However, children acquire them readily; a two-year-old, for example, may be able to pronounce a word with a lateral click [ǁ] with no problem, but still be unable to pronounce [s].[27] Lucy Lloyd reported that after long contact with the Khoi and San, it was difficult for her to refrain from using clicks when speaking English.[28]
See also
- Dental clicks
- Alveolar clicks
- Fricated alveolar clicks
- Retroflex clicks
- Lateral clicks
- Palatal clicks
- Labial clicks
- Nasal clicks
- Glottalised clicks
- Pulmonic-contour clicks
- Ejective-contour clicks
- Click letters
- List of phonetics topics
- Sublaminal lower alveolar click
- Clicking noise
Notes
- ^ This is the case for all clicks used as consonants in words. Paralinguistically, however, there are other methods of making clicks: under the tongue or as above but by releasing the rear occlusion first. See #Places of articulation.
- ^ Exceptions occurs in words borrowed from Bantu languages, which may have click in the middle.
- ^ ⟨ʇ⟩, ⟨ʗ⟩ have descenders; ⟨🡣⟩, ⟨ʖ⟩ have ascenders.
- ^ ⟨⦀⟩ (a triple pipe) in Doke (1954) and Cole (1966) is an ad hoc phonetic pipe letter for Doke's orthographic click letter ⟨ψ⟩.
- ^ Not counting the egressive "spurt" in Damin, and three additional voiced manners in Western ǃXoo, which pair up with voiceless manners.
- ^ Ekoka ǃKung has an additional manner, ˀᵑꞰ. Grootfontein and Mangetti Dune ǃKung, on the other hand, have a substantially smaller inventory: ᵏꞰ, ᶢꞰ, Ʞʰ, ᵑꞰ, ᵑ̊Ʞʱ, ᵑꞰˀ, Ʞ͡χ, Ʞ͡kxʼ.
- ^ Perhaps better described as slack voice. Tone-depressor effect.[22]
- ^ Tone-depressor effect. Sometimes a prenasalized click with a short, voiced oral occlusion, but usually without.
- ^ not prenasalized
- ^ perhaps borrowed from Gǀui
- ^ Not technically a click, but the only other attested sound with a lingual airstream mechanism.
- ^ Here the labial [m] may have assimilated to the velar place of the [w], as [m͡ŋw], with the release of the labial before the velar later generating a click [ᵐʘw]
References
- ^ IPA Handbook, p. 10
- ^ Instead of a tie bar, a superscript velar or uvular letter is sometimes seen: ⟨ᵏǂ ᶢǂ ᵑǂ 𐞥ǂ⟩ etc.
- ^ This can be convenient, as different authorities call the ǂ-clicks different things, so while it is unambiguous to call them "ǂ-clicks", it can be confusing to refer to them with terms like 'palatal', 'palato-alveolar' or 'alveolar', all of which have been used for both the sharp, flat-sounding ǂ-clicks and for the hollow-sounding ǃ-clicks.
- ^ Derek Nurse & Gérard Philippson (2003) The Bantu languages, pp 31–32
- ^ "Click languages | Britannica".
- ^ Hale, Ken; Nash, David. "DAMIN AND LARDIL PHONOTACTICS" (PDF). Australian National University. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 July 2022. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
- ^ Gunnink, Hilde. "The adoption and proliferation of clicks in Bantu languages: the role of hlonipha revisited." South African Journal of African Languages 43, no. 3 (2023): 216-225.
- ^ Including Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Levantine Arabic, Maltese, Persian, Romanian, Sicilian, Turkish, and occasionally in French
- ^ a b Fuchs, Susanne; Koenig, Laura; Winkler, Ralf (2007). Weak clicks in German? (PDF). Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Saarbrücken. pp. 449–452. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 16 May 2011.
- ^ Geoffrey Nathan, 'Clicks in a Chinese Nursery Rhyme', JIPA (2001) 31/2.
- ^ L&M 1996, p 246
- ^ Clement M Doke, 1926 (1969), The phonetics of the Zulu language. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press
- ^ Douglas Martyn Beach, 1938, The phonetics of the Hottentot language. W. Heffer & sons. ltd.
- ^ Click releases are not in themselves consonants (segments). To transcribe a click consonant, a second IPA letter is needed for the rear place of articulation, as in ⟨k͡ǂ⟩ or ⟨ǂ͡qχʼ⟩
- ^ Rosemary Beam de Azcona, Sound Symbolism. Available at http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~rosemary/55-fall2003-onomatopoeia.pdf Archived 23 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Lenore Grenoble (2014) "Verbal gestures: Toward a field-based approach to language description". In Plungian et al. (eds.), Language. Constants. Variables: In memory of A. E. Kibrik, 105–118. Aleteija: Saint Petersburg.
- ^ Amanda Miller (2011) "The Representation of Clicks", The Blackwell Companion to Phonology.
- ^ Wilhelm Bleek (1862) A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages, vol. 1, pp. 12–13
- ^ Miller, Brugman, Sands, Namaseb, Exter & Collins (2009) Differences in airstream and posterior place of articulation among Nǀuu clicks, Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39, 129–161.
- ^ Rainer Vossen (2013) Introduction, The Khoesan Languages, Routledge
- ^ Kenneth Pike, ed. Ruth Brend (1972) Selected Writings: To Commemorate the 60th Birthday of Kenneth Lee Pike. p. 226
- ^ Jessen & Roux, 2002. Voice quality differences associated with stops and clicks in Xhosa
- ^ According to Nurse & Philippson (2003:616). This is typically transcribed as a prenasalized click, and is not included in Miller.
- ^ William Bennett (2020) Click Phonology, in Bonny Sands (ed.) Click Consonants, Brill, p. 115–116.
- PMID 17656633.
- ^ Ladefoged 1968.
- ^ Kirk Miller, 'Highlights of Hadza fieldwork'. LSA, San Francisco, 2009.
- ^ Beach (1938), p 269.
Bibliography
- Ladefoged, Peter (1968). A phonetic study of West African languages: An auditory-instrumental survey (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-06963-7.
- ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
- Amanda Miller, Levi Namaseb, Khalil Iskarous. 2003. Tongue Body constriction differences in click types.
- Amanda Miller, 2011. "The Representation of Clicks". In Oostendorp et al. eds., The Blackwell Companion to Phonology.
- Traill, Anthony & Rainer Vossen. 1997. Sound change in the Khoisan languages: new data on click loss and click replacement. J African Languages and Linguistics 18:21–56.