Alveolar click · Lablypedia

The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the place of articulation of these sounds is ⟨⟩. The symbol is not an exclamation mark in origin, but rather a vertical bar with a subscript dot, the dot being the old diacritic for retroflex consonants, as the articulation corresponds to some conceptions of a retroflex consonant (but see retroflex clicks). Prior to 1989, ⟨⟩ (stretched c) was the IPA letter for the alveolar clicks, and this is still preferred by some phoneticians. The tail of ⟨⟩ may be the tail of retroflex consonants in the IPA, and thus analogous to the underdot of ⟨⟩. Either letter may be combined with a second letter or a diacritic to indicate voicing and the manner of articulation, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks.

Alveolar click consonants and their transcription

In official IPA transcription, the click letter is combined with a ⟨⟩ via a tie bar, though ⟨⟩ is frequently omitted. Many authors instead use a superscript ⟨⟩ without the tie bar, again often neglecting the ⟨⟩. 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 would require something like the guttural diacritic to distinguish uvular–alveolar clicks. Common alveolar clicks in these three transcriptions are:

The last can be heard in the sound sample at right; non-native speakers tend to glottalize clicks to avoid nasalizing them. The nasal click may also be heard at the right.

In the orthographies of individual languages, the letters and digraphs for alveolar clicks may be based on either the vertical bar symbol of the IPA, ⟨⟩, or on the Latin ⟨q⟩ of Bantu convention. Khoekhoe and most Bushman languages use the former; Naro, Sandawe, and Zulu use the latter.

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Features

Features of postalveolar clicks:

The basic articulation may be voiced, nasal, aspirated, glottalized, etc.
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 contrasted these two articulations as separate phonemes.) The release is a sharp, plosive sound in southern Africa, but in Sandawe it may be percussive, with the underside of the tip of the tongue striking the floor of the mouth after the release of the click (see below), and in Hadza the release is often quite weak.
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 median consonants, which means they are produced by releasing the airstream at the midline 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

English does not have an alveolar click (or any other click consonant) as a phoneme, but a plain alveolar click does occur in mimesis, as a sound children use to imitate a horse trotting.

Percussive release

In Sandawe, alveolar clicks commonly have a ballistic release, with the underside of the tip of the tongue subsequently striking the floor of the mouth. This allophone has been called "slapped" or "flapped" (not to be confused with flap consonants, such as the reduced alveolar clicks of Hadza). Sometimes the percussive slap is louder than the release, resulting in a sound that has been characterized as a "cluck". The symbol for the sublingual percussive component is ⟨⟩ in the extensions to the IPA; a slapped click is therefore transcribed ⟨⟩ or ⟨⟩ (or ⟨⟩). The percussive allophones of the five Sandawe alveolar clicks are (or etc.).

Clement Doke also noted a palatal click with slapped release, .

Nasal clicks that fit this description are used in nursery rhymes by speakers of Gan Chinese and of Mandarin, with varying degrees of competence. See Chinese click sounds for details.

"Fricated" alveolar clicks

A series of clicks in Ekoka !Kung have been variously described as retroflex or fricated palatal clicks.