I hope this helps- my ds 11 has had ticks on and off since he was six. The same ones you described, plus a few more, eventually they became verbal. Well it turns out he suffers from severe anxiety and has ocd. The ticks are not really ticks, they are actually ocd symptoms. Just something to look into.
Actually, this was part of reason behind DS's first eval. He became very anxious in a bad school environment (his disability was being completely ignored and he was actually being shamed for it - even though he had a 504 no one had read it) and he started displaying OCD, phobia about germs, and some sort of tic /ocd thing by which he was refusing/incapable of swallowing allegedly fearing that whatever "disgusting" thing that was around would go into his body, i.e., if people were sick and coughing he couldn't sallow his saliva, if he smelled something bad, was in a public bathroom, near a trashcan, etc. I did explicitly express concern about tourettes in that eval. He was diagnosed with anxiety disorder. That whole episode and behaviors is entirely behind us now - all those sort of fears behaviors melted away. The next thing was flicking his fingers. He would do that when he was nervous or trying really hard at something it seemed. Like, he was struggling with reading and he would flick his fingers while reading (at other times too but I noticed it a lot when reading). That has mostly disappeared. The next thing was shaking his hands when excited or nervous... like shaking them as if they hurt. (my little brother did this for years as a child shake his hands when excited and it reminded me of that). When asked why he does it - he says something like "it just makes my hands feel better." It seemed kind of sensory to me. Sometimes he bites his nails (I do that at times though). Now it's the throat noise.
Incidently or not, he's fatally allergic to peanuts... Like has come close to death with his throat closing up. I often felt that was basis to the inability to swallow. Even now he will not eat anything if some near him is eating peanuts/peanut butter. He will go hours with eating anything due to this underlying deep fear he will someone accidently ingest the poison.
