Some Interesting Implications of Clicks

(1) The overall use of click consonants in natural languages ranges from none at all (in languages like English) to frequent use of a complex inventory of clicks (in many Khoisan languages). However, a cross-linguistic survey1 shows that the distribution of clicks is surprisingly limited. (2) Only a few patterns of distribution occur in natural languages; specifically, clicks are always restricted to onsets, or root-initial onsets. (3) When nasal and non-nasal (=’oral’) clicks have different distributions, nasal clicks are always less restricted than non-nasal clicks. Two observed universals (4) Clicks are never codas (5) Every language with clicks has nasal clicks Two implicational relationships (6) Non-initial clicks imply initial clicks […! ] → [ #! ] 2 (7) Oral clicks imply nasal clicks [ ! ] → [ n!] Aims of this talk (8) Present a phonological explanation for the universals in (4) & (5), and the typologies associated with them, based on airstream features (9) Show how this explanation derives the implicational relationships in (6) & (7) (10) Point out one interesting implication of this proposal: phonetically impossible segments may be outputs of phonology * I am deeply indebted to all the people who got me interested in clicks, and everyone who gave me advice o