Alien places of articulation

[alice]

I was wondering if any of you have actually tried to develop the phonetics of non-human vocal tracts, and what new places and manners of articulation you have come up with.

[Kuchigakatai]

I haven't, but I think we really shouldn't underestimate how weird biological sound signals can get. The human tract as it is is able to do many weird things, which are not linguistically used because of their low volume/resonance/stridence or articulatory difficulty, but which you can hear beatboxers and animal imitators using.
https://youtu.be/GNZBSZD16cY

And don't get me started on birds.
https://youtu.be/WA0tP-p7m40

[Ares Land]

I was wondering if any of you have actually tried to develop the phonetics of non-human vocal tracts, and what new places and manners of articulation you have come up with.

Yep, you can have a look at one or my attempts here:

http://verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=442

[zompist]

I think this has come up before. For a client language intended for dragons, I added a place of articulation (figuring that they have longer jaws), removed all labials (as they have no lips), and added a beak-snap and a vowel articulation based on breathing fire.

I haven't worked out the iliu language much, but I tried to focus on elements that could be used underwater— e.g. rhythm and pitch. I assumed that most human articulations wouldn't communicate well.

We could really use an acoustician to tell us more about what's possible!