!Xóõ phonology

!Xóõ is a Khoisan language of Southern Africa, one of the click languages of the Bushmen. The phonology is certainly one of the most unique to be found: over 100 consonant phonemes, along with 4 vowel tones and 5 phonation types. It also gives conlangers an idea of how to create a large phonology without just throwing in every sound they come across (the proverbial "kitchen sink conlang"): have series of consonants, as !Xóõ has a series of 5 clicks combining with 16 accompaniments, to create 80 total clicks, or as the Slavic languages oppose palatalized and non-palatalized consonants.

(Due to the scarcity of information on !Xóõ, the content of this page is derived almost exclusively from Traill's "Phonetic and phonological studies of !Xóõ Bushman".)


VOWELS

Tone
There are four contrastive tones in !Xóõ: high (á), mid-level (ā), mid-falling (â), low (à):

sá?ã (te)	blankets (the te is a plural marker, not marked for tone here)
sâ?ã	seed
sà?ã	face

!?óa	hand
!?ôa	brother-in-law
!?ōa	this side

!áo	holding
!āo	remain
!ào	hip

All the pitches have an initial rise, and all except the mid-level fall off; the contour is only phonemic for the mid pitches.

From Traill, a diagram showing the averaged tones of one speaker:


Distribution of tones

Tones are not limited to a single syllable; in fact, (almost) all lexical stems have a single tone, which may be spread over multiple syllables:

ǁúʔɲa as a whole has the contour , just like the high tone on a single syllable (though it may be interrupted by glottalization or other material).

The tone does not remain consonant over an entire word if other morphemes with a tone are added to the stem:

dòõkâ 'kudu' (dòõ-kâ)

There are also a very few loanwords (all with three morae) with different tones: nāmúní 'lemon'. Not surprisingly, such offending forms often have variants in the tones: nāmūní.

Effects of environment on tones

Not surprisingly, the realizations of the tones are affected by their surroundings, especially vowel pharyngealization, breathy voice, and glottalization, which all lower the pitch. In fact, those three features tend increase the length of the vowel, so the tone can be identified when the vowel coloring is complete. Also, since all lexical items have two morae and those features can only occur on the first mora, the tone contour is continued normally on the second mora. A diagram from Traill showing such effects:



If the example words aren't readable, they are (from top to bottom):
glottalization: sá?ā, ǁgū?m, sâ?ã, sà?ã
pharyngealization: !qó̰u, !qō̰u, ǁâ̰n, |à̰i
breathy voiced (+glottalized): !ōh?e, |ōho, ǁnòh?lo, |òho
strident: |nā̰hn, |nà̰hn

Morae
Often, it's more useful to talk about morae in !Xóõ than syllables; a short vowel counts as one mora, with long vowels counting as two (note that long vowels are analyzed as a sequence of like vowels and are written as such, as in "!Xóõ"). A syllable-final nasal also counts as a separate mora.

Vowel sounds
!Xóõ has a basic system of five vowels, /a e i o u/, written with the same symbols. E and o tend to be mid, somewhere between the cardinal values of [e] and [ɛ], and [o] and [ɔ] :

sîi	come
sēe	truth
sâa	go
sòo	medicine
súnu	silliness

Allophonic variations
In general, i and e vary very little depending on phonetic environment, with a changing the most.

A is raised and fronted before i or e, whether it's followed by a consonant or not: |hēbe 'horse', ta̰e 'to feel'.

After a dental consonant and before i or n, a is raised significantly, to [ɜ] or even [ɪ], unless the next mora contains a, e.g. assimilation occurs in ǂàli but not in ǂàna.

Next to o or u, a may be raised and somewhat rounded. It may also be rounded after ʘ, so that the vowel of ʘân is similar to ɑ. Again, this does not occur if the next mora contains a.

U and o are somewhat centralized after a dental consonant and before a consonant. Also, u lowers somewhat before a or e.

Vowel colorings
In addition to having a normal (i.e. modal) articulation, vowels can also be nasalized (ã), breathy (ah), pharyngealized (a̰), glottalized (a?), as well as combinations of these, of which there are 39; Traill mentions:

breathy + nasalized	|néhẽ
breathy + glottalized	ùh?u
breathy + nasalized + glottalized	dzòh?ã
pharyngealized + nasalized	tā̰ã
pharyngealized + glottalized	!n̊â̰?m
pharyngealized + breathy (strident)	?!nō̰hm
pharyngealized + nasalized + breathy	dzḛ̄hĩ
glottalized + nasalized	qô?õ

Only the vowels a, o, u can be pharyngealized. Breathy voicing, glottalization, and pharyngealization can only occur on the first mora of a stem, and nasalization only on the second.

Effects of pharyngealization on vowel quality

Not surprisingly, pharyngealization shifts the position of vowels. A is retracted towards ɔ, and u and o are both lowered and centralized; thus, it is often difficult to discern ṵ and o̰ (and in some cases, the choice of which to write was arbitrary). It always occurs on the first mora (being most prominent in the middle), and the effects are basically gone by the second mora.

Strident vowels

Strident vowels are analyzed as breathy pharyngealized vowels, for both articulatory reasons (much more air flow than normal vowels, as well as pharyngeal constriction) and distributional ones (they follow the same restrictions that breathy and pharyngealized vowels do). Their production is difficult to describe without resorting to various anatomical terms that probably wouldn't help much. The epiglottis vibrates during strident vowels, but their most important feature is the constriction of the laryngeal sphincter; a similar situation occurs when coughing.

Glottalized vowels

Glottalized vowels are usually realized with creaky voice, but may have a full glottal stop (when emphasized, for instance). As for the pharyngeal vowels, glottalization can only be on the first mora, with the effect being most prominent in the middle of the mora; in fact, the glottalization is preceded and followed by very short non-glottalized vowels, so that the word |gú?m sounds more like |gú?úm, with very short u's, or even just |g?m (note that ? can represent glottalization as well as a full glottal stop).

Breathy vowels

Unlike the above colorings, breathy voicing extends over the entire first mora, unless the vowel is also glottalized, in which case the breathiness must stop when the glottalization occurs.


CONSONANTS

Clicks

At last we come to the most infamous part of !Xóõ, the clicks. There are 5 basic clicks:

ʘ - Bilabial, produced with friction (affricated)
ǂ - Palatoalveolar, laminal, unaffricated
| - Dental, laminal, affricated
! - (Post)dental, apical, unaffricated
ǁ - (Post)dental, apical, affricated, lateral

| and ǁ may be either dental or post-dental; alveolar is not used because interestingly, most San do not have an alveolar ridge:



There are also 16 click accompaniments, which may occur on any click (similar to secondary articulations such as palatalization):

Unaspirated voiceless velar stop	!âã
Voiced	|gáã
Voiced nasalized	ʘnṵ́ũ
Preglottalized and nasal	ǂàha
Voiceless nasalized	ǁn̊â?m
Voiceless uvular stop	ʘqóu
Voiced uvular stop and prenasalization	ɴ|ɢàa
Aspirated uvular stop	!qhàa
Uvular fricative	ʘxóõ
Ejective uvular stop	ǂq?àa
Ejected uvular affricate	ǁkx?âa
(Delayed) aspiration	ʘhòõ
Glottal stop	|?âa
Voiced and uvular fricative	gǂxá?ã
Voiced and aspirated	gǁhàã
Voiced and ejective uvular affricate	gǂkx?àa

Velar vs. uvular clicks (! vs. !q, etc.)
Not only do these clicks have different points of closure, they are different in that the uvular clicks are followed by the corresponding uvular stop, wheareas the velar ones are followed immediately by the next vowel.

Uvular fricative clicks (!x, !x?)
The secondary closure for this accompaniment is not actually uvular; the uvular fricative is not articulated until the click is released.

Voiced clicks (!g, g!x, g!h, g!kx?)
All of these clicks start with voicing, but for the last three, voicing stops just before the click's release, whereas it continues through to the following vowel for the plain voiced click (!g).


Non-click consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Post-dental	Velar	Uvular
Plain stop/affricate	p*    b	t    d	ts    dz	k    g	q    ɢ
Aspirated	ph*    b	th  dth	tsh  dtsh	kh	qh
+ uvular fricative		tx  dtx	tsx  dtsx
Ejective			ts?  dts?	kx?    gkx?	q?*
Ejective + uvular fricative		t?kx?  dt?kx?	ts?kx?  dts?kx?
Fricative			s	x
Nasal	m	n
Glottalized nasal	?m	?n

*P and ph are only in a few loanwords, and q? is found only in a few words in some dialects.

There are also three other consonants that only occur intervocalically: l (post-dental), ɲ (a palatal n), and d^j (a palatalized d); l does rarely occur initially in some dialects. B and d^j are often pronounced [β] and [j], respectively. When some words are emphasized, an intervocalic b may be pronounced as [p:], d^j as [t^j:], and l as [t:].

The voiced + voiceless consonants (dth, etc.) are pronounced analogously to the last three click accompaniments; voicing ceases slightly before the stop is released.

N and l are apical, whereas the rest of the dental and post-dental consonants are laminal. ɢ is sometimes prenasalized.


Phoneme distribution

Even though it has so many sounds, !Xóõ has fairly strict rules on where they can be placed.

Initial: all but l, d^j, ɲ
Intervocalic: l, d^j, ɲ, b, m, n, l
Final: m, n

These rules apply only to stems, so there are other possibilities with whole words:

|qhúũtê 'whitemen' (|qhúũ-tê)
síkādthábi 'butterfly' (sí-kā-dthábi)

An important rule is that a back consonant (velars, uvulars, and ʘ, ǁ, and !) must, with a few exceptions, before followed by a back vowel a, o, or u. Words that violate it can even be heard to shift to follow it: ki > ti, for example.

There are constraints on what can precede vowels of different phonation types:

Pharyngealized: cannot be preceded by x or an ejective or aspirated consonant
Breathy voicing: ejectives, aspirated sounds, s, x
Glottalized: ejectives

The legal vowel sequences are:

First vowel	Second vowel
a	i, e, a, o, u
u	i, e, a, u
o	i, e, a, o, u
i	i
e	e

This applies not only to VV sequences but VCV ones as well (doubled vowels are realized as long vowels).


More

!Xóõ clicks aren't just some minor oddity; they are at the heart of the phonological system. 72.5% of initial consonants are clicks, with 22.5% being stops, 3% being fricatives, and 2% being nasals. So, since I haven't described exactly how clicks are produced, I'll close with some sites that do:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_consonant
http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test2materials/articulatory_phonetics.htm
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html#Anchor-Clicks-11481 (sound files)
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/chapter14/_xoo.html (more sound files, of actual !Xóõ)

And if you want some good old-fashioned communication with other people, you can go to the Zompist Board, and in particular this thread about clicks (hell, just go the board anyway).

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