Alveolar clicks

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IPA – number	178
IPA – text	ǃ
IPA – image
Entity	ǃ
X-SAMPA	!\
Kirshenbaum	S!
Sound sample (help·info)

The alveolar or postalveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia.

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the forward articulation of these sounds is ǃ. The symbol is not an exclamation mark in origin, but rather a pipe with a subscript dot, the old diacritic for retroflex consonants. It must be combined with a symbol for the rear articulation to represent an actual speech sound. Attested (post)alveolar clicks include:

IPA	Description
[k͡ǃ] or [ǃ͡k]	voiceless velar (post)alveolar click (may also be aspirated, ejective, affricated, etc.)
[ɡ͡ǃ] or [ǃ͡ɡ]	voiced velar (post)alveolar click (may also be breathy voiced, affricated, etc.)
[ŋ͡ǃ] or [ǃ͡ŋ]	nasal velar (post)alveolar click (may also be voiceless, aspirated, etc.)
[q͡ǃ] or [ǃ͡q]	voiceless uvular (post)alveolar click
[ɢ͡ǃ] or [ǃ͡ɢ]	voiceless uvular (post)alveolar click (commonly prenasalized)
[ɴ͡ǃ] or [ǃ͡ɴ]	nasal uvular (post)alveolar click
[ǃ͡ʔ]	glottalized (post)alveolar click

The last is what is heard in the sound sample at right, as non-native speakers tend to glottalize clicks to avoid nasalizing them.

Prior to 1989, [ʗ] was the IPA representation of the voiceless velar postalveolar click.

Features

Features of postalveolar clicks:

• The manner of articulation is a sharp, plosive-like release in southern Africa, but in Hadza and Sandawe they are frequently flapped, with the underside of the tip of the tongue striking the floor of the mouth after the release of the click; in some cases, the release is rather faint, and it is this sub-apical percussive sound that dominates.

The rear closure may be voiced, nasal, ejective, or affricate, and have any of several phonations.

• They are produced with two articulatory closures in the oral cavity. The forward place of articulation is alveolar or postalveolar, depending on the language, and apical, which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge or the roof of the mouth behind the alveolar ridge. (Damin had both articulations as separate phonemes.) The rear place of articulation may be either velar or uvular.
• (Post)alveolar clicks may be either oral or nasal, which means air is allowed to escape either through the mouth or the nose.
• They are central consonants, which means they are produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is velaric ingressive (AKA lingual ingressive), which means the pocket of air trapped between the two closures is rarefied by a "sucking" action of the tongue, rather than by the glottis or the lungs. The release of the forward closure produces the 'click' sound.

Occurrence

See also

• List of phonetics topics