Clicks and the idea of a human protolanguage

Abstract

This paper disputes the arguments behind the idea that a human protolanguage had clicks that were independently retained in languages whose speakers reflect a very early divergence in the human population. It presents a less spectacular view of protolanguage, and it considers an advantage of clicks in hunting and peculiarities in the shape of Bushman palates, which may have helped clicks into speech. 1. Click languages and their speakers Although clicks are widely used in human communication, their use is mostly restricted to interjections, in which they are not combined with other speech sounds. Only in southern and eastern Africa, are clicks are used in phonemic function. Outside this region, only one click language is known. It was called Damin, and it was never anybody’s first language, but an artificial language known until the past century among initiated men of the Lardil tribe on Mornington Island, off Australia (Hale, 1992). In addition to clicks, all of them nasalized, Damin used also other sounds, such as ejectives, that do not occur elsewhere in Australia. The African click languages belong to several different language groups that have not

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