Voiceless_alveolar_click

Tenuis alveolar click

Tenuis alveolar click

Consonantal sound


The voiceless or more precisely tenuis (post)alveolar click is a click consonant found primarily among the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for a tenuis alveolar click with a velar rear articulation is k͡ǃ or k͜ǃ, commonly abbreviated to , ᵏǃ or simply ǃ; a symbol abandoned by the IPA but still preferred by some linguists is k͡ʗ or k͜ʗ, abbreviated , ᵏʗ or just ʗ. For a click with a uvular rear articulation, the equivalents are q͡ǃ, q͜ǃ, qǃ, 𐞥ǃ and q͡ʗ, q͜ʗ, qʗ, 𐞥ʗ. Sometimes the accompanying letter comes after the click letter, e.g. ǃk or ǃᵏ; this may be a simple orthographic choice, or it may imply a difference in the relative timing of the releases.[1]

Quick Facts k͡ǃ k͡ʗ, ᵏǃ ᵏʗ ...
Quick Facts q͡ǃ q͡ʗ, 𐞥ǃ 𐞥ʗ ...

Features

Features of the tenuis (post)alveolar click:

  • The airstream mechanism is lingual ingressive (also known as velaric ingressive), which means a pocket of air trapped between two closures is rarefied by a "sucking" action of the tongue, rather than being moved by the glottis or the lungs/diaphragm. The release of the forward closure produces the "click" sound. Voiced and nasal clicks have a simultaneous pulmonic egressive airstream.
  • Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
  • Its phonation is voiceless, unaspirated, and unglottalized, which means it is produced without vibration or constriction of the vocal cords, and any following vowel starts without significant delay.
  • It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
  • It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.

Occurrence

Tenuis alveolar clicks are found primarily in the various Khoisan language families of southern Africa and in some neighboring Bantu languages.

More information Language, Word ...

References

  1. Afrika und Übersee. D. Reimer. 2005. pp. 93–94.

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Voiceless_alveolar_click, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.