Codas

Sharma found it hard to compare codas, especially when two or more whales were singing over one another.

Variations in tempo, rhythm and length of the whales' click sequences, called codas, weave a rich acoustic tapestry.

Whales with “shared coda” – similar dialects – also “engage in chorusing bouts, where they seem to co-ordinate the production of the codas.

In others, codas are restricted to a small subset of the consonants that appear in onset position.

More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantal codas: /- w’ - y’ - rgh /.

Syllables without glottalized codas developed the opposite tone.

The phonotactics of many languages forbid syllable codas.