The palatal or palato-alveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found, as components of words, only in southern Africa. The tongue is nearly flat, and is pulled back rather than down as in the postalveolar clicks, making a sharper sound than those consonants. ('Sharper' meaning that the energy is concentrated at higher frequencies.) The tongue makes an extremely broad contact across the roof of the mouth, making correlation with the places of articulation of non-clicks difficult, but Ladefoged & Traill (1984:18) find that the primary place of articulation is the palate, and say that "there is no doubt that [ǂ] should be described as a palatal sound".
Doke noted a palatal click with a slapped release, [ᵑǂ¡].[1]
Palatal click consonants and their transcription
In official IPA transcription, the click letter is combined with a ⟨kɡŋqɢɴ⟩ via a tie bar, though ⟨k⟩ is frequently omitted. Many authors instead use a superscript ⟨kɡŋqɢɴ⟩ without the tie bar, again often neglecting the ⟨k⟩. Either letter, whether baseline or superscript, is usually placed before the click letter, but may come after when the release of the velar or uvular occlusion is audible. A third convention is the click letter with diacritics for voicelessness, voicing and nasalization; this does not distinguish velar from uvular palatal clicks. Common palatal clicks in these three transcriptions are:
In the orthographies of individual languages, palatal clicks may be written either with digraphs based on the vertical-bar letter of the IPA, or using the Latin alphabet. Khoekhoee and most Bushman languages use the former. Orthographies using the latter include multigraphs based on ⟨ç⟩ in Juǀʼhoansi (1987 orthography) and originally in Naro, the latter since changed to ⟨tc⟩, and on ⟨qc⟩. In the 19th century, ⟨v⟩ was sometimes used (see click letters); this might be the source of the Doke letter for the voiceless palatal click, ⟨ↆ⟩, apparently a v over-struck with a vertical bar.
Features
Features of palato-alveolar clicks:
The basic articulation may be voiced, nasal, aspirated, glottalized, etc.
The forward place of articulation is broad, with the tongue flat against the roof of the mouth from the alveolar ridge to the palate. The release is a sharp, plosive sound.
Clicks may be oral or nasal, which means that the airflow is either restricted to the mouth, or passes through the nose as well.
They are central consonants, which means they are produced by releasing the airstream at the center of the tongue, rather than at the sides.
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.
Occurrence
Palatal clicks only occur in the southern African Khoisan languages (the Khoe, Kx'a, and Tuu families), where they are extremely common, and in Bantu languages such as Yeyi.
Ekoka ǃKung has a series of laminal postalveolar-to-palatal clicks with a noisy, fricated release which derive historically from more prototypical palatal clicks. These have been variously described as fricated alveolar clicks and (inaccurately) as retroflex clicks.[2] Unlike typical palatal clicks, which have a sharp, abrupt release, these have a slow, turbulent anterior release that sounds much like a short inhaled [ʃ]; they also have a domed tongue rather than a flat tongue like a typical palatal click.[citation needed] The release has also been described as lateral.[3] Like the clicks they derive from, they do not have the retracted tongue root and back-vowel constraint typical of alveolar clicks. A provisional transcription for the tenuis click is ⟨ǃ͡s⟩, though this misleadingly suggests that the clicks are affricates.[4] Another proposal is to resurrect the old ʃ-like letter for palatal clicks, ⟨𝼋⟩.
↑ Miller (2010) Phonological patterns involving new types of complex and contour segments in endangered Khoesan languages, CUNY Conference on the Phonology of Endangered Languages
↑ Miller, Holliday, Howcroft, Phillips, Smith, Tsui, & Scott. 2011. "The Phonetics of the Modern-day reflexes of the Proto-palatal click in Juu languages". In A concise dictionary of northwestern ǃXun (2008), König & Heine transcribe them ⟨‼⟩, which is elsewhere used for the retroflex clicks.
↑ Clement Doke (1925) An outline of the phonetics of the language of the ʗhũ̬꞉ Bushman of the North-West Kalahari. Bantu Studies 2: 129–166.
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