----- Original Message -----
From: Muke Tever
To: phoNet@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: [phoNet] (unknown)

Good! with a little bit of luck this may develop into a discussion of how various other interestins types of speech sound (laterals, rhotics, nasals, ejectives, implosives, doubly articulated consonants, etc.) evolve. Let's begin with clicks. The main problem is that the languages that have them have little or no recorded history (often in addition to having barely been studied), so we have to rely on far-from-perfect comparative reconstructions when trying to recover their past changes. I'll try to find some illustrative examples of click behaviour, but please give me a little time (one or two days) to prepare -- I've never been asked this question before :-)
 
Here's some introductory information about common click types in Khoisan languages, if you'd like to kill a little time meanwhile.
 
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,118155+3+109812,00.html
 
Piotr
 

Ok, I have a question!
I have a vague understanding of how many sounds can change in a language
over time... a stop /t/ could become a fricative /T/, or an unvoiced /t/
becoming a voiced /d/ for example...

...but I don't know how this kind of change affects the more 'exotic' sounds
such as clicks.  Do clicks mutate?  (I'm sure they must).  Do they mutate
into other clicks, or can they become regular consonants?  Do clicks often
mutate _from_ consonants?

That's all my question.  ;p

      *Muke!