Clicks

[Martin Walsh]

The use-of-clicks to-avoid-spooking-game argument (and more) appeared in:

Knight, A. et al. 2003. African Y chromosome and mtDNA divergence provides 
insight into the history of click languages. Current Biology 13: 464-473.

And is discussed critically in:

Guldemann, T. undated. Clicks, genetics, and "proto-world" from a linguistic 
perspective. [a pdf of which can be found online with a quick google]

The whole of TG's paper is of relevance, but see especially #5.1 'A cultural 
advantage of click phonemes?'.

Martin Walsh
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ronald Kephart" <rkephart at unf.edu>
To: <linganth at cc.rochester.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 2:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Linganth] Clicks
>
> (2) The assumption that these clicks were (consciously?) adopted as a way 
> to avoid "spooking game"; and the subgrievance: are clicks really less 
> "spooky" than other consonants? (To be fair, if there's a squirrel on my 
> back porch and I make alveolar click sounds, it'll often sit up and look 
> at me as if trying to figure out what sort of grotesque squirrel I might 
> be, giving me time to shoot it if I wanted to*; but if I just say 
> something like, "yo, squirrel!" it'll usually run off.)
>