I did the EB bit. One thing not mentioned about Koisan languages there, but spoken of in one of David Crystal's books is the fact that there is a very serious sprachbund in this part of the world. The clicks have been borrowed by other languages.  There is a suggestion from the EB article that the reputed genetic relationship of some of these languages may only be very long term areal influences.
 
I can't wait until we get to glotallized ejectives. Has anyone seriously refuted Gam & Ivanov's reconstruction for PIE?
 
Mark.
----- Original Message -----
From: Piotr Gasiorowski
To: phoNet@egroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 9:14 AM
Subject: Re: [phoNet] (unknown)

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Muke Tever
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.
 
 
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!