clicks in Southeast Asia

[David Gil]

Thanks, everybody, for the information on clicks.

Summarizing the picture so far:  in mainland SE Asia, there seems to be
a rough east-to-west isogloss.  North of it (Lao, Kammu, West Bahnaric)
clicks are used for positive affect, south of it (Khmer, Thai, possibly
also the Mon of Burma) clicks are used for negative affect.

This sounds surprising, but no more surprising than similar patterns in
other parts of the world.  (Eg. in many dialects of Arabic, a single
"tsk" means "no"; but in the Yemenite dialect it apparently means
"yes".)  On the other hand, the above pattern could be an artefact of an
imperfect set of data points.  (People often find it difficult to
consciously access the clicks in their native languages, or to remember
them in languages they've worked on.)

So is there any reality to the above isogloss?  Lao and Thai are in
close contact: are speakers of one aware that speakers of the other do
it differently?  And what about other languages:  Vietnamese, Burmese,
Hmong-Mien, Chinese?  Note that both positive and negative affect can
coexist in the same language, expressed in different ways, as in
Indonesian, where "ck" is negative, but "ck ck ck" positive.

Looking forward to more data and discussion,

David

--
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-9952321
Fax: 49-341-9952119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://monolith.eva.mpg.de/~gil/