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Re: What _is_ rhoticity? (wa laterals (was: Pharingials etc))

From:Javier BF <uaxuctum@...>
Date:Friday, February 13, 2004, 17:28
>The definition I gave earlier for rhotics (lowered third formant) is >the one favored by Ladefoged. However, another study (Lindau 1985) >muddies the waters considerably. She lists the following sounds as >rhotics (not an exhaustive list): > >[4] tap/flap >[r] apical trill >[r_0] voiceless apical trill >[r\] approximant >[R\] uvular trill (IPA small cap "R") >[R] voiced uvular fricative (IPA inverted small cap "R") >[X] voiceless uvular fricative
Neither [r\], [R] nor [X] have to be rhotic by necessity. In fact, I frequently hear [X] as an allophone of Spanish "j", but seldom I hear it rhotic (sometimes, yes, I have actually heard the rhotic sound [X`], usually when a "j" is pronounced too emphatically and comes out as what I would rather spell "jr" or "jjj"). As for non-rhotic [r\], listen to the following recording of the Edo word "arábá": http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/app endix/languages/edo/edo.html Even though the page is headed "Rhotics", _that_ particular recording of the sound [r\] is not rhotic. To me, it sounds between "ayaba" and "a(a)aba", with no r-like or r-coloured sound. I ignore whether actual rhotic pronunciations for that sound are possible as allophonic variation in that language, but given the context where that recording is offered, I assume that whether /r\/ is actually pronounced rhotic or non-rhotic is phonemically irrelevant and that the sound is usually pronounced tap-like (that is, actually rhotic) in fluent speech but was held for too long to sound that way when it was being recorded. OTOH, in the recording of the following word "ará" which illustrates the fricative phoneme, I detect mild rhoticity, and in the recording of the last word "àrà" I find rhoticity is self-evident. Another recording that clarifies rhoticity can be found here: http://www.haidalanguage.org/sounds-of-haida.html Listen to the recording of "awáa" and compare it with the recording of "wul" or with any English "w" at that. Can you hear the difference? The pronunciation of "awaa" in that recording displays a very evident rhotic "w" [w`] (the preglottalized "'w" recorded in "'wáadaa náay" sounds rhotic too), while no rhoticity appears in the recording of "wul" (nor in any English "w" I've ever heard). Given that AFAIK the w's in "awáa" and "wul" represent the same phoneme, I assume that both rhotic and non-rhotic w's are usual allophones of Haida /w/. I remember that hearing rhoticity in "awáa" struck me vividly the first time I heard those recordings of Haida because that was the first time I heard a rhotic w and at first I thought 'Hey, wasn't it French "arroi" what I've just heard? Why is there no r in the spelling "awáa"?'. At the bottom of the same page, listen to the recording of "k'aláax^an". Do you hear anything there that you would ever label "r-like" or "r-coloured"? I definitely don't. But they are pronouncing a [X] there (spelled "x^"), which according to Mrs. Lindau is supposed to be a rhotic. So, there you are an audible proof that, as I mentioned above, an uvular fricative is not a rhotic sound per se. Although it _can_ be rhoticized into [X`], like what I sometimes hear in emphatically pronounced Spanish j's. BTW, I can record a sample of this sound for you all, if you like, so that you can hear both the rhotic [X`] and the non-rhotic [X] side by side to compare and be finally convinced beyond doubt. Now, if by attentively and repeatedly hearing and comparing those recordings, you still sincerely can't tell which given sounds are rhotic and which ones aren't, then nothing I can tell you will make you realize of it. For me, rhoticity is an in-your-face evident thing when I hear it. I find it takes me no effort to detect when it's there and when it's not there in any given sound, it simply "jumps at my ears", so to speak, but maybe that's because my ears are already fine-tuned to detect that feature because my native tongue makes a clear-cut phonemic distinction between rhotic alveolars and non-rhotic alveolars and, between the rhotic ones, a further phonemic distinction is made between single- and multiple-pulse kinds (the multiple-pulse one being also "the rhotic par excellence"), so fortunately I'm provided with a very clear mental image of rhoticity. Cheers, Javier

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Eddy Ohlms <etg@...>