Re: Two seperate questions: Rhoticity/Topic-Comment

--- "Adam F." <hypaholic@...> xiè le:

> These questions I have are things I've always been
> curious about. Does anyone know why some languages
> have the tendency to have weak rhoticity or to drop
> so-called "r" sounds? The biggest example I know of
> for this happening are of course many english
> dialects that drop "r" and I think I've read of
> certain german ones doing it, and also some romance
> languages/dialects doing it. But I can never find
> any good sources explaining reasons why
> this "phenomenon" may happen. Any information would
> be much appreciated.
Well, I can't speak for Romance languages, but I can
speak for German dialects, even though I'm a
non-native speaker (and native Germans, please chime
in if I get it wrong).

(Heavens, I believe I may spawn a 'YAGPT' here...)

In German, the tendency was, at least in the North,
close to France, for [r] to gradually retract
backwards to the uvular region and become [R].

After a while, this [R] weakened to an approximant,
[R\], because frankly, it's a pain in the arsch to
trill something in fast speech. This approximant
pronunciation is valid still for r's in the onset
position.

Post-vocalically, however, it weakened further, into a
vocalic sound fairly close to schwa (because when you
get voiced approximants that far back in the vocal
tract, they might as well be vowels anyways, unless
you're speaking Arabic or Ubykh or something).

(and actually, the phonetic value of this vocalized
rhotic is the IPA symbol that looks like an
upside-down two-story 'a', but I can't remember the
X-SAMPA for it right off-hand).

Anyways, from this point on, it would be best to
consider the sequence /vowel/+/post-vocalic-rhotic
coda/ as a diphthong, than as a vowel-consonant
sequence.

So, to sum this lengthy explanation up, the phonetic
changes can go like this (using the word /Narr/ 'fool'
for an example):

[nar] --> [naR] --> [naR\] --> [na@] --> [na:]

Note that all five of these pronunciations are
more-or-less valid, depending on dialect and speech
register.

My German professor tends to use the third
pronunciation when enunciating, and the second
elsewhere, whereas the other Germans in my class use
the second one for enunciation, and the last one for
casual or fast speech (and I, as a non-native speaker,
imitate their practice, because that's where I use my
German the most, among those in my own age cohort).

This reminds me of a sort-of-similar sound change in
Middle Chinese, with the syllable /ni/ (which could
mean the number 'two', as well as the pronoun 'you',
among other things):

[ni] --> [n_ji] --> [Ji] --> [JZi] --> [Zi] --> [r\i]
--> [r\1]--> [@r\] --> [Ar\] (this is the modern
standard Mandarin pronunciation, more or less) -->
[A:] (and this is a dialectical pronunciation, I'm
told)

Hence the saying on Conlang, 'if [ni] can change into
[A:], then anything is possible'.

> Also, is it possible or common for highly synthetic
> languages to follow topic-comment patterns and does
> anyone know of any languages where this is the case?
Well, French, for one, if you buy into the analysis
that French is actually a polysynthetic language
underneath and beyond its orthographic representation
as an isolating/inflecting language. At least, I think
French prefers to take a topic-comment structure;
anyone who actually speaks French halfway decently (I
don't, I'm afraid), please feel free to expound.




	
		
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