Clicks with noisy accompaniment in West !Xoon

Abstract

The current study is concerned with ingressive stops (clicks) with a noisy accompaniment exemplified by data from West !Xoon, a Taa variety ("!Xóõ", Tuu/Southern Khoisan) spoken in Namibia. Within the obstruent system of West !Xoon, we describe (1) aspirated clicks, (2) clicks followed by a laryngeal fricative, (3) clicks with an aspirated uvular accompaniment, and (4) clicks followed by a uvular fricative. In previous analysis for the variety of East !Xoon (Traill and Ladefoged, 1994), (2) were analysed as series of "delayed aspiration", while the contrast between (1) and (3) was ignored. A novelty discovery are prenasalized "voiced" clicks followed by [h], the voiced counterparts of clicks with "delayed aspiration", which are probably absent in East !Xoon. We present an acoustic analysis of alveolar and palatal clicks based on field data of 6 speakers (3 male /3 female), where for each click type plus noise accompaniment three tokens in #CV context had been recorded repeatedly. As descriptive parameters served durational measures of burst length, cluster length, length of aspiration delay, and spectral measures of burst and friction parts. In opposite to the previous distinction our findings suggest a clear 3-way distinction of clicks (1-3) with noisy accompaniment.