query: clicks used "paralinguistically"

[Daniel Long]

Hi David,

Interesting topic.
Japanese uses a single (not repeated) dental click.  But the expression
is not directed towards the interlocutor but is introspective.  It is
used by the speaker to show  disappointment, regret, frustration, etc.
with some sort of mistake s/he him/herself has made, missed opportunity,
and so on and so on.  There doesn't seem to any head movement, gesture,
etc. which accompanies the click, except perhaps for the expected facial
chagrin.

There is a word "che" which is used in the same situations and has no
apparent lexical meaning.  This word and the click seem to be related.
It is possible that the word "che" is an attempt to "lexify" this noise,
and to make it pronounceable in the "consonants-vowels" sense of the
word.  I am not sure what I said is clear.   To illustrate -- Noises
that in other languages (English for example) would be imitated as
simple noises produced with the mouth, are rendered into more orthodox
strings of consonants and vowels in Japanese, as onomatopoeia, in other
words.  Things like a gun-shot or a car crash sound, for example.  At
any rate the phonological shape of the word "che!" is very unusual for
Japanese.

Danny

--
Daniel Long, Associate Professor     tel  +81-426-77-2184
Japanese Language and Literature Dept.    fax  +81-426-77-2140
Tokyo Metropolitan University
1-1 Minami Osawa, Hachioji-shi, Tokyo  192-0397 Japan
mailto:dlong at bcomp.metro-u.ac.jp
http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/long/