Editing Click consonant (section)

==Types of clicks==
{{anchor|Click type}}Like other consonants, clicks can be described using four parameters: [[place of articulation]], [[manner of articulation]], [[phonation]] (including glottalisation) and [[airstream mechanism]]. As noted above, clicks necessarily involve at least two closures, which in some cases operate partially independently: an anterior articulation traditionally represented by the special click symbol in the IPA—and a posterior articulation traditionally transcribed for convenience as oral or [[nasal consonant|nasal]], voiced or voiceless, though such features actually apply to the entire consonant. The literature also describes a contrast between [[velar consonant|velar]] and [[uvular consonant|uvular]] rear articulations for some languages.

In some languages that have been reported to make this distinction, such as [[Nǁng language|Nǁng]], all clicks have a uvular rear closure, and the clicks explicitly described as uvular are in fact cases where the uvular closure is independently audible: contours of a click into a pulmonic or ejective component, in which the click has two release bursts, the forward (click-type) and then the rearward (uvular) component. "Velar" clicks in these languages have only a single release burst, that of the forward release, and the release of the rear articulation isn't audible. However, in other languages all clicks are velar, and a few languages, such as [[Taa language|Taa]], have a true velar–uvular distinction that depends on the place rather than the timing of rear articulation and that is audible in the quality of the vowel.

Regardless, in most of the literature the stated place of the click is the anterior articulation (called the ''release'' or ''influx),'' whereas the manner is ascribed to the posterior articulation (called the ''accompaniment'' or ''efflux).'' The anterior articulation defines the ''click type'' and is written with the IPA letter for the click (dental {{angbr IPA|ǀ}}, alveolar {{angbr IPA|ǃ}}, etc.), whereas the traditional term 'accompaniment' conflates the categories of manner (nasal, affricated), phonation (voiced, aspirated, breathy voiced, glottalised), as well as any change in the airstream with the release of the posterior articulation (pulmonic, ejective), all of which are transcribed with additional letters or diacritics, as in the ''nasal alveolar click'', {{angbr IPA|ǃŋ}} or {{angbr IPA|ᵑǃ}} or—to take an extreme example—the ''voiced (uvular) ejective alveolar click'', {{angbr IPA|ᶢǃ͡qʼ}}.

The size of click inventories ranges from as few as three (in [[Sesotho phonology#Consonants|Sesotho]]) or four (in [[Dahalo language|Dahalo]]), to dozens in the [[Kxʼa languages|Kxʼa]] and [[Tuu languages|Tuu]] (Northern and Southern Khoisan) languages. [[Taa language|Taa]], the last vibrant language in the latter family, has 45 to 115 click phonemes, depending on analysis (clusters vs. contours), and over 70% of words in the dictionary of this language begin with a click.<ref>L&M 1996, p 246</ref>

Clicks appear more [[stop consonant|stop]]-like (sharp/abrupt) or [[affricate]]-like (noisy) depending on their place of articulation: In southern Africa, clicks involving an [[apical consonant|apical]] [[alveolar consonant|alveolar]] or [[laminal consonant|laminal]] [[postalveolar consonant|postalveolar]] closure are acoustically abrupt and sharp, like stops, whereas [[labial consonant|labial]], [[dental consonant|dental]] and [[lateral consonant|lateral]] clicks typically have longer and acoustically noisier click types that are superficially more like affricates. In East Africa, however, the alveolar clicks tend to be [[flap consonant|flapped]], whereas the lateral clicks tend to be more sharp.