DOCSLIB.ORG

Coproduction and Coarticulation in Isizulu Clicks

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Coproduction and Coarticulation in Isizulu Clicks Coproduction and Coarticulation in IsiZulu Clicks Coproduction and Coarticulation in IsiZulu Clicks by Kimberly Diane Thomas-Vilakati University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRES S, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN LINGUISTICS Editorial Board: Judith Aissen, Andrew Garrett, Larry M. Hyman, Marianne Mithun, Pamela Munro, Maria Polinsky Volume 144 Coproduction and Coarticulation in IsiZulu Clicks by Kimberly Diane Thomas-Vilakati © 2010 by The Regents of the University of California All rights reserved. Published 2010 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN 978-0-520-09876-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) Library of Congress Control Number: 2010922226 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Dedication This study is dedicated to the following individuals: To my loving father, who sacrificed his life to work hard in order to educate me and who, through his loyalty and devotion, made this all possible. To my loving mother, who gave selflessly to seven children and many grandchildren, whose confidence in me never waivered and who gave me the fortitude to compete in the international arena. To my loving grandmother, Amelia, who instilled a wonderful love of language in me through her poetry, and whose protection and love I carry with me and still feel to this day. To my loving husband, who has been my chief counselor and guide for the last nine years of my life, and whose emotional support of me in this task was truly divine And especially the following: To Mateu, my loving son, who has brought so much joy into my life, and whose unconditional love gives me the strength to be a better person and to pursue and succeed in such a difficult endeavor, and from whom I gained the desire and motivation to continue to better myself for the sole purpose of setting for him a good example. To Simanga, my daughter, who is such a breathe of fresh air in my life. May your light continue to shine. Let it shine. To all those children of mine who call me mother but have never been nurtured by me on a day-to-day basis, this too is for you. It is through the dedication of this book to my children that I wish to bless them, such that they may always strive to be the best that they can be. Contents CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO ORAL INGRESSIVES ............................................. 1 1.0 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................1 1.1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: COARTICULATION .......................................................1 1.2 CLICKS AND COARTICULATION.....................................................................................3 1.3 ABOUT ISIZULU ................................................................................................................6 1.4 BASIC CLICK PRODUCTION ............................................................................................9 1.5 DYNAMIC ARTICULATORY STUDIES ..........................................................................10 1.6 STATIC PALATOGRAPHY AND LINGUOGRAPHY.......................................................11 1.7 ORDER OF THE CLOSURES, ORDER OF THE RELEASES............................................12 1.8 RAREFACTION MECHANISM.........................................................................................12 1.9 OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY............................................................................................13 CHAPTER 2: STATIC PALATOGRAPHY AND LINGUOGRAPHY...........................15 2.0 INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................15 2.1 METHODOLOGY ...............................................................................................................16 2.1.1 Speakers ....................................................................................................................16 2.1.2 Corpus .......................................................................................................................16 2.1.3 Data Collection Procedure ......................................................................................17 2.2 LINGUOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS.........................................................................................18 2.2.1 Classification of Linguograms.................................................................................18 2.2.2 Linguographic Results..............................................................................................24 2.3 STATIC PALATOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS ..........................................................................28 2.3.1 Defining reference lines ...........................................................................................28 2.3.2 Conversion factors....................................................................................................32 2.4 MEASUREMENTS.............................................................................................................33 2.4.1 Tongue blade measurements....................................................................................33 2.4.2 Tongue dorsum measurements.................................................................................36 2.4.3 Cavity measurements................................................................................................37 2.5 STATISTICAL ANALYSIS................................................................................................39 2.6 PALATOGRAPHIC RESULTS...........................................................................................40 2.6.1 Position and Width of Front Contact ......................................................................43 2.6.2 Tongue Dorsum Results ...........................................................................................47 2.6.3 Cavity Dimensions....................................................................................................50 2.6.4 Cavity Width Asymmetry ..........................................................................................59 2.7 SUMMARY OF THE PALATOGRAPHIC RESULTS ........................................................62 2.8 DISCUSSION .....................................................................................................................62 CHAPTER 3: ELECTROPALATOGRAPHY .....................................................................65 3.0 INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................65 3.1 METHODS OF DATA REDUCTION IN EPG ..................................................................65 3.1.1 Qualitative data reduction methods ........................................................................66 3.1.2 Quantitative data reduction methods ......................................................................66 3.2 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF DYNAMIC PALATOGRAPHY ..............68 3.3 PROCEDURE .....................................................................................................................68 3.3.1 Equipment .................................................................................................................68 vii viii Contents 3.3.2 Recording Set-up ......................................................................................................72 3.3.3 Experimental Design ................................................................................................73 3.4 DATA ANALYSIS: METHODOLOGY .............................................................................74 3.4.1 Region Definition......................................................................................................74 3.4.2 Quantitative Measurements .....................................................................................76 3.5 RESULTS..........................................................................................................................86 3.5.1 Qualitative Characterization of the Click Types .....................................................86 3.5.2 Quantitative Characterization of the Click Types..................................................93 3.5.3 Characterizing the Anterior Articulation..............................................................112 CHAPTER 4.0 CONSONANT COMPARISONS ..............................................................125 4.1 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................125 4.1.1 Corpus and Data collection...................................................................................125 4.1.2 Data Analysis Procedure .......................................................................................126 4.2 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS ............................................................................................127 4.2.1 Plosives.....................................................................................................................127
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The South African Directory Enquiries (SADE) Name Corpus
    (C) Springer Nature B.V. 2019. In Language Resources & Evaluation (2019). The final publication is available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10579-019-09448-6 The South African Directory Enquiries (SADE) Name Corpus Jan W.F. Thirion · Charl van Heerden · Oluwapelumi Giwa · Marelie H. Davel Accepted: 25 January 2019 Abstract We present the design and development of a South African directory enquiries (DE) corpus. It contains audio and orthographic transcriptions of a wide range of South African names produced by first- language speakers of four languages, namely Afrikaans, English, isiZulu and Sesotho. Useful as a resource to understand the effect of name language and speaker language on pronunciation, this is the first corpus to also aim to identify the “intended language”: an implicit assumption with regard to word origin made by the speaker of the name. We describe the design, collection, annotation, and verification of the corpus. This includes an analysis of the algorithms used to tag the corpus with meta information that may be beneficial to pronunciation modelling tasks. Keywords Speech corpus collection · Pronunciation modelling · Speech recognition · Proper names 1 Introduction Multilingual environments, such as in South Africa, present unique and interesting challenges to systems dealing with pronunciation variability. Spoken dialogue systems need to adequately deal with various factors that affect speech production, such as a speaker’s socio-economic background, mother tongue language, age, and gender [37, 2]. Differences among these factors result in speakers producing words with varying pronunciation, leading to deteriorated recognition performance [1]. Hand-crafting rules to deal with pronunciation variation is both time-consuming and impractical.
    [Show full text]
  • Building a Universal Phonetic Model for Zero-Resource Languages
    Building a Universal Phonetic Model for Zero-Resource Languages Paul Moore MInf Project (Part 2) Interim Report Master of Informatics School of Informatics University of Edinburgh 2020 3 Abstract Being able to predict phones from speech is a challenge in and of itself, but what about unseen phones from different languages? In this project, work was done towards building precisely this kind of universal phonetic model. Using the GlobalPhone language corpus, phones’ articulatory features, a recurrent neu- ral network, open-source libraries, and an innovative prediction system, a model was created to predict phones based on their features alone. The results show promise, especially for using these models on languages within the same family. 4 Acknowledgements Once again, a huge thank you to Steve Renals, my supervisor, for all his assistance. I greatly appreciated his practical advice and reasoning when I got stuck, or things seemed overwhelming, and I’m very thankful that he endorsed this project. I’m immensely grateful for the support my family and friends have provided in the good times and bad throughout my studies at university. A big shout-out to my flatmates Hamish, Mark, Stephen and Iain for the fun and laugh- ter they contributed this year. I’m especially grateful to Hamish for being around dur- ing the isolation from Coronavirus and for helping me out in so many practical ways when I needed time to work on this project. Lastly, I wish to thank Jesus Christ, my Saviour and my Lord, who keeps all these things in their proper perspective, and gives me strength each day.
    [Show full text]
  • American Indian Languages (Abbreviated A), and the Alphabet of the Dialect Atlas of New England (Abbreviated D)
    CONCORDANCE OF PHONETIC ALPHABETS Robert C. Hollow, Jr. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill A concordance of 3 major phonetic alphabets used in North America is presented and discussed. Those alphabets consid- ered are one used by the International Phonetic Association, one used for American dialectology and one used for American Indian languages. Comparisons are made in terms of vowel symbols, -consonant symbols, secondary segmental- symbols, and diacritic marks. Typewriter equivalents of standard symbols are also given. [phonetics, linguistics, North A.merica, American Indians, phonetic symbols] This paper is a brief concordance of the major phonetic alphabets currently in use by linguists and anthropologists in North America. The alphabets included are the International Phonetic Alphabet (abbreviated I in this paper), the Americanist alphabet used in the transcription of American Indian Languages (abbreviated A), and the alphabet of the Dialect Atlas of New England (abbreviated D). For convenience I have divided the concordance into five sections: 1) Primary Vowel Symbols, 2) Primary Consonant Symbols, 3) Secondary Segmental Symbols, 4) Diacritic Marks, and 5) Typewriter Symbols. The form of I used in this paper is the 1951 revision as fully presented in The Principles of the International Phonetic Association (International Phonetic Association 1957). D is presented and discussed in the Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of New England (Kurath, Bloch and Hansen 1939). This alphabet is based onI, but includes certain modifications made to facilitate the transcription of American English dialect material. There is no single phonetic alphabet currently in use by students of American Indian Languages, for this reason I have consulted several alternate formu- lations of phonetic alphabets given by scholars in the field, most notably 42 Bloch and Trager (1942), Pike (1947), Trager (1958), and Shipley (1965).
    [Show full text]
  • Uu Clicks Correlate with Phonotactic Patterns Amanda L. Miller
    Tongue body and tongue root shape differences in N|uu clicks correlate with phonotactic patterns Amanda L. Miller 1. Introduction There is a phonological constraint, known as the Back Vowel Constraint (BVC), found in most Khoesan languages, which provides information as to the phonological patterning of clicks. BVC patterns found in N|uu, the last remaining member of the !Ui branch of the Tuu family spoken in South Africa, have never been described, as the language only had very preliminary documentation undertaken by Doke (1936) and Westphal (1953–1957). In this paper, I provide a description of the BVC in N|uu, based on lexico-statistical patterns found in a database that I developed. I also provide results of an ultrasound study designed to investigate posterior place of articulation differences among clicks. Click consonants have two constrictions, one anterior, and one posterior. Thus, they have two places of articulation. Phoneticians since Doke (1923) and Beach (1938) have described the posterior place of articulation of plain clicks as velar, and the airstream involved in their production as velaric. Thus, the anterior place of articulation was thought to be the only phonetic property that differed among the various clicks. The ultrasound results reported here and in Miller, Brugman et al. (2009) show that there are differences in the posterior constrictions as well. Namely, tongue body and tongue root shape differences are found among clicks. I propose that differences in tongue body and tongue root shape may be the phonetic bases of the BVC. The airstream involved in click production is described as velaric airstream by earlier researchers.
    [Show full text]
  • The Effects of Speech Rate on VOT for Initial Plosives and Click Accompaniments in Zulu
    The E ffects of S peech Rate on VOT for Initial Plosives and Click Accompaniments in Zulu Patrick J. Midtlyng University of Chicago 1. Introduction 1.1. Overview Cross-linguistic studies of acoustic correlates have shown that for phonological voicing distinctions (e.g., voiced/voiceless, aspirated/unaspirated, some ejective/non-ejective) there are ranges of values for voice onset time (henceforth VOT) that are associated with those distinctions (Stevens 1989, VanDam 2007, Lisker & Abramson 1964, Miller et al. 1983, Hodgson & Miller 1996, Volaitis & Miller 1992, Cho & Ladefoged 1999). VOT is the interval from the release of a plosive (burst) to the beginning of glottal excitation. There are three VOT categories: pre-voiced (negative VOT), short-lag (short positive VOT), and long-lag (long positive VOT). VOT varies with place of articulation (henceforth POA): the farther back the closure the longer the VOT (Fischer-Jørgenson 1954, Peterson & Lehiste 1960), but other factors including prosodic context, lexical frequency, speaker variability, and speech rate can affect VOT ranges (Miller et al. 1983, Kessinger & Blumstein 1997, Miller 1977, Miller & Baer 1983, VanDam & Port 2003; 2005, Theodore et al. 2007). 1.2. Phonetics of Zulu Table 1 shows the distribution of phonological voice types across the places of articulation for Zulu plosives and click accompaniments. Notice that not all POAs are complete. Table 1. Plosives and click accompaniments by phonological manner and place of articulation. The phonetic transcription of the target sound
    [Show full text]
  • Click Variation and Reacquisition in Two South African Ndebele Varieties
    CLICK VARIATION AND REACQUISITION IN TWO SOUTH AFRICAN NDEBELE VARIETIES Stephan Schulz, Antti Olavi Laine, Lotta Aunio & Nailya Philippova This article deals with click consonants in two Nguni varieties of South Africa, namely isiNdebele, or Southern Ndebele, as it is better known outside of South Africa; and Sindebele, or Northern Transvaal Ndebele. We review previous research on the topic, in which isiNdebele been described as having a some- what reduced click inventory compared to better described Nguni languages, and Sindebele has been claimed to have lost clicks completely. We also review previous research on click loss, variation, and acquisition. We then describe the current situation of both language varieties regarding clicks. For Sindebele, we observe that while clicks indeed seem to have been almost completely replaced by other consonants, some speakers still do produce clicks in isolated words, possibly as a result of recent contact with isiZulu. In isiNdebele, we find that the lateral click has been lost almost completely, while the distinction between dental and postalveolar has been lost for some speakers (with most of them preferring the dental click), whereas some speakers still maintain the distinc- tion. We propose a tentative correlation between increasing formal education in the isiNdebele language and the tendency to maintain the two clicks as distinct, but generally find the functional load of the distinction to be very low, at least on a lexical level. 1. INTRODUCTION The language varieties known as Ndebele belong to the Nguni branch of the Southern Bantu languages. All Nguni languages are spoken in South Africa, with the exception of Northern Ndebele (or Zimbabwean Ndebele), which is spoken in Zimbabwe.
    [Show full text]
  • Drytok: Tlok1
    tr'.z*w. Dritok An Introduction to the Language of the Drushek Donald Boozer The Languages of Kryslan Volume 1 W5&^Y2-lt'.q'.=x:.=D5^Q5=D2; D2=!D3-z*.z*.n.=s'.s'.=hr:.zp.th.=D5^Q5=B5; There are many paths ahead of you. You choose and travel one of them. Literally, "MANY paths exist YONDER WITH-RESPECT-TO YOU. YOU choose and walk WITH-RESPECT-TO ONE." ~ A Drushek proverb. Verbalizations: lt'.q'. > thed.gi ("path, way, route to a goal") x:. > khaa (A generic word for "existence", can be used for one sense of "to be") z*.z*.n. > tik.tik.ni ("be confronted with several alternatives") s'.s'. > chi.chi (an all-purpose conjunction, in this case joining two verbs) hr:.zp.th. > herr.zhep.ta ("walk, travel, move along a path (by foot)") "Many paths exist for you. You choose one and walk it." What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence ~ Ludwig Wittegenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus © December 2008, Donald Boozer Revised, April 2009 Revised, February 2010 Table of Contents Chapter 1 - Historical Background Chapter 2 - The "Sounds" of Dritok II.A. Audible Phonology II.B. Inaudible Phonology/Morphology Chapter 3 - Linguistic Characteristics III.A. Dritok: Ambiguous Syntax III.B. "Parts of Speech" III.C. Word Order Cultural Intermission: Shekstan Chapter 4 - Nominals and Nominal-Phrase Operations IV.A. Compounding IV.B. Number IV.C. Case IV.D. Articles and Demonstratives IV.E. Possession Chapter 5 - Predicate Nominals and Related Constructions V.A. Proper Inclusion and Equation V.B.
    [Show full text]
  • Unicode Request for Additional Phonetic Click Letters Characters Suggested Annotations
    Unicode request for additional phonetic click letters Kirk Miller, [email protected] Bonny Sands, [email protected] 2020 July 10 This request is for phonetic symbols used for click consonants, primarily for Khoisan and Bantu languages. For the two symbols ⟨⟩ and ⟨ ⟩, which fit the pre- and post-Kiel IPA and see relatively frequent use, code points in the Basic Plane are requested. Per the recommendation of the Script Ad Hoc Committee, two other symbols, ⟨‼⟩ and ⟨⦀⟩, may be best handled by adding annotations to existing punctuation and mathematical characters. The remainder of the symbols being proposed are less common and may be best placed in the supplemental plane. Three precomposed characters, old IPA ʇ ʖ ʗ with a swash (⟨⟩, ⟨⟩, ⟨⟩), are covered in a separate proposal. Characters U+A7F0 LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH WITH DOUBLE BAR. Figures 1–9. U+A7F1 LATIN LETTER RETROFLEX CLICK WITH RETROFLEX HOOK. Figures 16–19. U+10780 LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED T WITH CURL. Figures 8–13. U+10781 LATIN LETTER INVERTED GLOTTAL STOP WITH CURL. Figures 8, 9, 11, 12, 15. U+10782 LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH WITH DOUBLE BAR AND CURL. Figures 8-10. U+10783 LATIN LETTER STRETCHED C WITH CURL. Figures 8, 9, 12, 14. U+10784 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL TURNED K. Figure 20. Suggested annotations U+A7F0 LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH WITH DOUBLE BAR ⟨⟩ resembles U+2A0E INTEGRAL WITH DOUBLE STROKE ⟨⨎⟩, though the glyph design is different. (The Script Ad Hoc Committee recommends not unifying them.) U+203C DOUBLE EXCLAMATION MARK ⟨‼⟩ may be used as a phonetic symbol, equivalent to a doubled U+1C3 LATIN LETTER RETROFLEX CLICK ⟨ǃ⟩.
    [Show full text]
  • LCC2 Program
    - 2 - Schedule th Friday, July 6 1:30 PM Meetup at Sather Gate & guided tour of area 5:00 PM Dinner at Long Life Vegi House th Saturday, July 7 8:45 AM Registration 9:00 AM David Salo Giving Historical Depth to Language Construction John Quijada Language Personalities: How the Interplay of Phonology, Phonotactics and Morpho-phonology Creates a Linguistic Aesthetic Lila Sadkin Tenata: Dissolving Lexical Categories Jim Henry Glossotechnia, a language creation card game 1:00 PM Lunch & Glossotechnia 1:45 PM David Peterson The Evolution of Sidaan Donald Boozer Drushek: The Sound of No Voice Speaking Workshop Conlanging 101: Intro & Advanced Vocabulary Generation, part 1 Panel Applications of Language Creation in Pedagogy Open Q&A 5:00 PM Close 6:00 PM Dinner off campus - 3 - Sunday, July 8th 8:45 AM Registration 9:00 AM Jeff Burke Reverse engineering of phonological change John Clifford The Problems with Success: What happens when an opinionated conlang meets its speakers Sylvia Verblessness in Kelen Sotomayor Gabriel Koulikov The Linguistic Reinforcement of Worldview: Lexical/phonological structure and grammatical paradigms in Baseline Bipentahexadecimal. James Gang My Right-Brain Verbotomy: How creating invented words changed the way I think 1:00 PM Lunch & Verbotomy 2:00 PM Clint Hutchison Universal Semantic Markers Panel Conlang Relay Workshop Conlanging 101: Intro & Advanced Vocabulary Generation, part 2 Panel Incorporating Conlangs into Your Life Open Q&A 5:00 PM Close 6:00 PM Dinner off campus - 4 - Welcome. I‟m proud to say that this is the Second Language Creation Conference. We have a great lineup of presentations, with even more content and diversity than last year.
    [Show full text]
  • Linguistic Diversity Research Among Speakers of Isindebele and Sindebele in South Africa
    LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY RESEARCH AMONG SPEAKERS OF ISINDEBELE AND SINDEBELE IN SOUTH AFRICA Studia Orientalia 120 LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY RESEARCH AMONG SPEAKERS OF ISINDEBELE AND SINDEBELE IN SOUTH AFRICA EDITED BY LOTTA AUNIO & AXEL FLEISCH Helsinki 2019 Linguistic Diversity Research among Speakers of isiNdebele and Sindebele in South Africa Edited by Lotta Aunio & Axel Fleisch Studia Orientalia, vol. 120 Copyright © 2019 by the Finnish Oriental Society Editor Lotta Aunio Co-editor Sari Nieminen Advisory Editorial Board Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (Arabic and Islamic Studies) Tapani Harviainen (Semitic Studies) Arvi Hurskainen (African Studies) Juha Janhunen (Altaic and East Asian Studies) Axel Fleisch (African Studies) Hannu Juusola (Middle Eastern and Semitic Studies) Klaus Karttunen (South Asian Studies) Kaj Öhrnberg (Arabic and Islamic Studies) Heikki Palva (Arabic Linguistics) Asko Parpola (South Asian Studies) Simo Parpola (Assyriology) Saana Svärd (Assyriology) Typesetting Lotta Aunio Sari Nieminen ISSN 0039-3282 ISBN 978-951-9380-95-7 PunaMusta Oy Tampere 2019 CONTENTS Preface ...........................................................................................................vii Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 AXEL FLEISCH & LOTTA AUNIO Language sociological trends in South African Ndebele communities: A Pilot survey .................................................................................................17 RIHO GRÜNTHAL, SAMI HONKASALO &
    [Show full text]
  • Sound Description
    SOUND DESCRIPTION Click on each sound to learn more about its description. South African Multilingual Consonants Chat LABIAL DENTAL ALVEOLAR POST- PALATAL VELAR GLOTTAL ALVEOLAR plain dental alveolar Post- velar plain lateral alveolar voiceless Stop p t c k ʔ voiced b ɓ d ɟ g ɠ Fricative voiceless ɸ f fʃ ɸs ɸʃ θ s ɬ ʃ ç x h voiced β v βʒ ð z ɮ ʒ ʝ ɣ ɦ voiceless Affricate p̪ f ps pʃ ts tɬ tʃ kx voiced b̪ v dβ dz dɮ d ʒ Click voiceless ǀ ǁ ! voiced ᶢǀ ᶢǁ ǂ Nasal m ɱ n ɲ ŋ Rhotic r Approximant w l j NB: In the images that show the production of each sound, the open glottis is indicated by an oval shape; the closed one with two parallel skewed lines. Sound Descriptions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 1. Voiceless Bilabial Plosive The /p/ sound is a bilabial sound, which means it is produced by pressing both lips together with a sudden release of air. This sound is made when the air is released through the lips and slightly open teeth. The sound you hear comes from the pressure of the air that is released. This sound has the following features: Airstream mechanism: Pulmonic State of the glottis: Open State of the velum: Raised Place of articulation: Bilabial Manner of articulation: Stop Voiceless Bilabial Plosive /p/ isiXhosa Tshivenda Sepedi English ipepile pala pelo top ipepile.m4a Pala.mp4 Pelo.aac top.aac Voiceless Bilabial Aspirated Plosive /ph/ isiXhosa Tshivenda Sepedi English pheka phala phela pot pheka.m4a phala.mp4 Phela.aac Pot.aac 2.
    [Show full text]
  • 18 the Representation of Clicks
    TBC_018.qxd 12/10/10 16:49 Page 416 18 The Representation of Clicks Amanda Miller 1 Introduction Click consonants are a type of complex segment. Complex segments are defined as single segments that have two oral constrictions that are nearly simultaneous (Sagey 1990). Click consonants have an anterior constriction, which is either labial or coronal, and a posterior constriction, which is uvular in those Khoesan languages in which posterior place of clicks has been investigated with articulatory methods. The posterior place of clicks in Zulu starts out as velar in the closure, and releases at a uvular place of articulation. Clicks are unique in that they are produced with an ingressive lingual (also known as velaric) airstream mechanism, which is produced by trapping air between a lingual or linguo-labial cavity formed between the two oral constrictions. The tongue moves, in different ways for different clicks, to expand this oral cavity and thus to rarefy, or decompress, the air within it. When the anterior constriction is released, air rushes in to make the characteristic popping sound. The lingual ingressive airstream differentiates clicks from pulmonic stop consonants, which are produced on an outward flow of air from the lungs, and from other complex segments, such as labial-velars and labial-coronals, which are produced using a pulmonic or glottalic airstream. Clicks have played an important role in phonological theory because of the phonological complexity that they exhibit, and the large number of click contrasts found in Khoesan language inventories. Clicks exhibit at least three major areas of complexity that are not found in most other consonants: (1) the double place of articulation features; (2) the overlap of the two constrictions for the length of the segments; and (3) the non-pulmonic airstream mechanism.
    [Show full text]