Re: Two seperate questions: Rhoticity/Topic-Comment

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>:

> Andreas Johansson skrev:
> > Quoting taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-
>
> >> To be exact, the r and the following consonant fuse into
> >> a retroflex in some dialects (including mine), meaning
> >> some Norwegian and Swedish dialects have a full series of
> >> retroflex consonants. Neat, huh?
> >
> > "Some" dialects is rather an understatement - it's a
> > feature of rikssvenska, and of the speech of I'd think
> > most Swedes.
>
> I would contend that _rikssvenska_ is a norm of
> orthography, grammar and vocabulary rather than of
> pronunciation. In particular there have always been
> academics from Scania who have spoken _rikssvenska_ with
> [R] and without r-coalescence. NB that in grammar and
> vocabulary their speech is markedly different from Scanian
> dialect, and also in pronunciation, but only as regards the
> absent or milder diphthongization of long vowels, and not
> in the realization of /r/, which is always some kind of
> uvular for these people.  The fact that most people heard
> in radio and TV speak more-or-less _rikssvenska_ with a
> more-or-less mid-Swedish pronunciation is another matter.
There's little use in arguing terminology, I suppose, but in my experience most
people *think* of "TV Swedish" as normative for pronunciation. For some a norm
to adhere to, for some one to rebel against in celebration of one's own
dialect, but a norm nonetheless.

                                              Andreas