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Clicks are Alveolar or Laminal Postalveolar closure are acoustically abrupt and sharp, like stops, while Bilabial , Dental , and Lateral clicks typically have longer and acoustically noisier releases that are more like affricates. DISTRIBUTION See Also: Click language Clicks occur in all three Khoisan Language Families of southern Africa as well as in several neighbouring Bantu Languages which Borrowed Them from Khoisan languages, such as Nguni ( Zulu , Xhosa , Swazi , Phuthi and Ndebele , and the Zulu-based Pidgin Fanagalo ), Sesotho , Yeyi of Botswana , and the Mbukushu , Kwangali , and Gciriku languages of the Caprivi Strip . Clicks also occur in the Sandawe and Hadza languages of Tanzania , as well as in Dahalo , an endangered South Cushitic Language of Kenya , which may retain them from an episode of Language Shift . The only non-African language known to employ clicks as regular speech sounds is Damin , a ritual code used by speakers of Lardil in Australia . One of the clicks in Damin is actually an ''egressive'' click, using the tongue to compress the air in the mouth for an outward (egressive) "spurt". The Southern African Khoisan languages only utilize Root -initial clicks. Hadza , Sandawe , and several of the Bantu Language s also allow Syllable -initial clicks within roots, but in no known language does a click close a syllable or end a word. English and many other languages may use clicks in Interjection s, such as the dental "tsk-tsk" sound used to express disapproval, or the lateral click used with horses. In Ningdu Chinese, flapped nasal clicks are used in nursery rhymes, and in Persian a click accompanied by tipping the head upwards signifies "no". Clicks will occasionally turn up elsewhere, as in the special Register s twins sometimes develop with each other. TYPES OF CLICKS As noted above, clicks necessarily involve at least two closures: an anterior articulation which has traditionally been represented by the special click symbol in the IPA, and a posterior articulation which has been traditionally described as oral or Nasal , voiced or voiceless, etc. (It's quite easy to pronounce a nasal click, since while maintaining the double oral closure you're free to breathe through the nose. In fact, these are easier to pronounce for many people than oral clicks.) The literature also describes a contrast between Velar and Uvular rear articulations for some languages. However, recent work has shown that for languages which make this distinction, all clicks have a uvular, or even pharyngeal, rear closure, and that the clicks explicitly described as uvular are in fact click-pulmonic consonant clusters/contours with two release bursts. In the case of "velar" clicks in these languages, there is only a single release burst, that of the forward click release, and the release of the rear articulation isn't audible. Nonetheless, in most of the literature the stated place of the click is the anterior articulation (called the ''release'' or ''influx),'' while the manner is ascribed to the posterior articulation (called the ''accompaniment'' or ''efflux),'' as in a "nasal dental click". There are numerous manners of clicks, some of them quite daunting. These include what has been described as voiceless, voiced, aspirate, breathy voiced, nasal, voiceless nasal, breathy voiced nasal, glottalized, voiceless nasal glottalized, affricate, ejective affricate, prevoiced, prenasalized, and others as well, including extremely complex combinations such as a voiced velar click followed by voiceless affricated ejective, , and a velar ejective click followed by uvular ejective, (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996). However, some of these may be Consonant Cluster s rather than individual segments. The size of click inventories ranges from as few as four for the Dahalo Language of Kenya , to dozens in the Juu and Tuu languages (Northern and Southern Khoisan), and perhaps over a hundred, depending on how they're analysed, in ǃXóõ (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996). In the latter language, over 70% of words begin with a click. TRANSCRIPTION The five click releases with dedicated symbols in the , whereas "acute" clicks are Pharyngeal .) Thus the alveolar click sounds something like a cork pulled from a bottle (a low-pitch pop), at least in Xhosa; while the dental click is like English ''tsk! tsk!,'' a high-pitched sucking on the incisors. The lateral clicks are pronounced by sucking on the molars of one or both sides. The bilabial click is different from what many people associate with a kiss: the lips are pressed more-or-less flat together, as they are for a or an [m , not rounded as they are for a [w]. The IPA came up with a set of Latin-based symbols for these sounds, but they were never much used, and were eventually given up for the Khoisanist symbols: There are a few less well attested articulations, such as a noisy laminal denti-alveolar lateral release (<Ⅲ> pipe in an ''ad hoc'' transcription), which contrasts with an apical postalveolar lateral in Mangetti Dune ǃKung; an abrupt sub-apical retroflex release <‼> in Angolan ǃKung; and a "slapped" alveolar click in Hadza and Sandawe, where the tongue slaps the bottom of the mouth after the release. (These distinctions may suffice for the Damin releases as well.) However, the Khoisan languages are poorly attested, and it is quite possible that, as they become better described, more click releases will be found. Typically when a click consonant is transcribed, two symbols are used, one for each articulation, connected with a tie bar. This is because a click such as has been traditionally been analysed as a nasal velar rear articulation pronounced simultaneously with the forward ingressive release . The symbols may be written in either order, depending on the analysis. However, a tie bar is not often used in practice, and when the manner is a simple {Link without Title} , it will often be omitted as well. That is, = = = = . The manner of a click is generally written before the release: or , and this is preferred by the IPA. However, many Khoisanists prefer to write the manner second: or . This is because any diacritics which follow belong to the manner rather than to the forward release, and they are more easily understood when they are made diacritics of the manner. Regardless, elements which do not overlap with the release are always written according to their temporal order: Prenasalization is always written first in = , and the second ejective is always written second in = . While the , or using the number codes which they have assigned to each symbol. PLACES OF ARTICULATION These are often called click ''types, releases,'' or ''influxes.'' There are seven or eight known releases, not counting slapped or egressive clicks. These are ''bilabial affricated'' , or "bilabial"; ''laminal denti-alveolar affricated'' , or "dental"; ''apical (post)alveolar plosive'' , or "alveolar"; ''laminal postalveolar (palato-alveolar) plosive'' , or "palatal"; ''subapical postalveolar (retroflex)'' (in central Ju); and two lateral clicks, which in the only dialects known to distinguish them (northern Ju) are ''laminal denti-alveolar lateral'' with a forward release (or sometimes a palatal click with a lateral release), and ''apical postalveolar lateral'' with a rear release. There may be an additional palatal-like click, symbolized , in another Ju lect which is currently being investigated. Given the poor state of documentation of Khoisan languages, it is quite possible that additional releases will turn up. No language is known to contrast more than five releases. Names found in the literature The terms for the click releases were originally developed by Bleek in 1911. Since then there has been some conflicting variation. Here are the terms used in some of the main references. MANNERS OF ARTICULATION ''(Data is primarily from Ladefoged; see references at individual language articles.)'' Click manners are often called click ''accompaniments'' or ''effluxes,'' but both terms are objected to on theoretical grounds. There is a great variety of click manners, both simplex and complex, the latter variously analysed as consonant Clusters or Contour s. 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 of Nama, of Sandawe, and of Hadza may be essentially the same phoneme, as may and ; no one language distinguishes either set, and the differences in transcription may have more to do with the approach of the linguist than with actual differences in the sounds. Some Khoisan languages are Typologically unusual in allowing mixed Voicing in non-click consonant clusters/contours, such as , so it is not surprising that they would allow mixed voicing in clicks as well. There is ongoing discussion as to which clicks are best analysed as consonant clusters. For example, some linguists feel that ejective clicks are not possible, and indeed in many Khoisan languages they appear to be clusters. However, in other languages, phonetic measurements have found that, although the ejective release follows the click release, it is the rear closure of the click that is ejective, not a subsequent consonant. (In Ladefoged's analysis in the table below, if there is only a single segment, this is indicated by a single non-subscript letter for the accompaniment.) This is one reason for analysing such clicks as airstream contours instead of clusters. Of the languages illustrated below,
(all spoken primarily in Namibia and Botswana )
CLICK GENESIS AND CLICK LOSS It is not known how clicks arose. It is often suggested that they developed from other complex consonants, but the development of clicks from other consonants has never been observed. Clicks are often portrayed as a primitive or primordial feature of human language, but we have no reason to suspect that they are very old compared to other speech sounds. In fact, given their complexity, they may be relatively recent. However, several still vibrant languages demonstrate click loss. For example, the East Kalahari Languages have lost a large percentage of their clicks, presumably due to Bantu influence. Generally a click is replaced by a consonant that retains the Manner Of Articulation of the accompaniment. Alveolar click releases tend to simply drop out, leaving a velar stop or affricate such as , while palatal clicks leave behind a palatal stop such as , or a post-alveolar affricate , and dental clicks tend to leave an alveolar affricate behind. That is, the resulting consonant tends to retain the manner of the click as well as the Place of the forward articulation. REFERENCES
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