Table 2.15. Velaric consonants
Dental Post-alveolar
Lateral Voiceless
11
é ó
í Aspirated
éH óH
íH Voiced
g
é
g
ó
g
í Glottalized
é’ ó’
í’ Nasalized
n
é
n
ó
n
í
The phonetic features of these clicks will be briefly considered below.
12
For the purposes of comparison, the voiceless clicks will not be discussed in their own section, but rather will be
used to highlight the features of the other click types. After the phonetic descriptions of the click types, the distributional patterns of the different clicks will be discussed.
2.2.1 Aspiration
As with the pulmonic oral stops, aspiration is contrastive in clicks. This can be illustrated by the following minimal pairs which display an opposition between a voiceless click and an aspirated
click: Table 2.16. Minimal pairs of aspirated and unaspirated clicks
Unaspirated voiceless click
Aspirated voiceless click
é é¤me
to be deep éH
éH¤me
to sing
í ía
to plant
íH íHa
to brush off
Figure 2.3 shows the waveform for éHime,
‘to sing’, which contains the aspirated dental click [
éH]:
Figure 2.3. Aspirated dental click.
11
The click type described as voiceless not only lacks voicing, but also aspiration, glottalization, and nasalization. For
ease of labeling, it is referred to here simply as voiceless.
12
For more information on the phonetic aspects of Sandawe clicks, see Wright et al. 1995.
This can be contrasted with the unaspirated dental click in é¤me ‘to be deep’, which is shown
in figure 2.4. The release of the click goes more quickly into the vowel i:
Figure 2.4. Unaspirated lateral click.
2.2.2 Voicing
Voiced clicks are very rare in Sandawe. We have only five words containing voiced clicks in a data set of 320 words containing clicks, as shown in table 2.17:
Table 2.17. Voiced clicks
g
é
g
é‚Û˘
g
éo˘ bird type
g
ó
g
óakH¤na to carry in a concealed fashion
g
óekHe fruit type
g
óokHom greater kudu
g
í
g
íoè˘
g
íe greater kudu male
Some speakers pronounce these five words with voiceless aspirated clicks instead.
13
Figure 2.5 shows the waveform of
g
óakH¤na˘ ‘to carry in a concealed fashion sg. obj.’:
13
Cf. Tucker and Bryan 1977:307, who report that voiced clicks vary with voiceless unaspirated ones.
Figure 2.5. Voiced post-alveolar click. The voicing of the click starts 73 milliseconds before the release of the post-alveolar closure of
the tongue. This time of prevoicing is much shorter than it is with other Khoisan languages Wright et al.1995:22.
2.2.3 Glottalization
The glottalized clicks can be recognized by the short silence immediately after the click. After the release of the click, the glottis is opened for a following vowel. This can be seen in figure
2.6 which shows the waveform of a glottalized post-alveolar click in ófl ‘lice eggs’
:
Figure 2.6. Glottalized post-alveolar click. In contrast, in a voiceless click the glottis stays open during the pronunciation of the click and
therefore the click can be released directly into the following vowel. Figure 2.7 shows the waveform of a voiceless post-alveolar click in the word
ófl ‘bone’:
Figure 2.7. Voiceless post-alveolar click. Within a word, a vowel followed by a glottalized click is usually nasalized. Elderkin 1989: 51
refers to this predictable nasalization as ‘accidental nasality’ and also notes that a word-final vowel may be nasalized when it is followed by a word beginning with a glottalized click.
Glottalization in clicks involves both the constriction of the glottis and the lowering of the velum, the latter of which results in the nasalization of a preceding vowel. Elderkin 1992 discusses
some possible explanations for this velic opening. We have observed that the degree to which vowels are nasalized in the environments
described above varies freely. In some instances, the relevant vowel may only be weakly nasalized, whereas on other occasions, it is more strongly nasalized.
14
In the phonological transcription used in this paper, we leave vowels which are accidentally nasalized unmarked for
nasality. However, we have been unable to clearly determine whether some vowels immediately preceding a glottalized click are phonologically, rather than accidentally, nasalized.
2.2.4 Nasalization
