Re: What are the Sampa representations for various |r|s?

On Thursday, November 4, 2004, at 03:27 , Sally Caves wrote:

> I'm posing the question under different cover, since I think many of you
> are
> tuning out some threads, or are distracted by recent disappointing events.
I've already answered most of this in another mail that I sent off before
receiving this; so I repeat what I have already posted   :)

[snip]

> The front trilled "r," what a Welshman might say in pronouncing Ronabwy.
> Is
> that [R]?
No - it's [r]

> The voiceless front trilled "r," what a Welshman might say in pronouncing
> "rhan."  This is sometimes not actually a trill, so much as a "kind" of
> palatal fricative, the sound you get when you limit the voiceless trill to
> one "beat."
It depends on your analysis of the sound. If you think it is essentially
devoicing of /r/ with the aspiration being a secondary feature, you would
write [r_0]; if, like me, you consider that it is essentially an aspirated
/r/ with the devoicing being a secondary feature you would write [r_h].
This has been debated many times over the years I have been on Conlang.
Personally, I think [r_0] and [r_h] are basically the same thing - it's a
matter of personal choice which feature you consider primary & which
secondary.

If it's just one beat, then we have a voiceless aspirated flap, i.e. [4_o]
  or [4_h]

> The voiced velar fricative.  What a Frenchwoman would say when pronouncing
> the word "rouge."  Is that the one represented by [R]?
I've never heard a velar fricative used for this. IME it has always been a
voiced uvular fricative or even uvular approximant.

The voiced velar fricative which is normal for intervocalic /g/ in Spanish
id [G]. The voiced uvular fricative/approximant is indeed [R].
================================================

> The velar trill.  [R\]  What a uvularly athletic German of the "older
> generation" ;) might say in pronouncing "geradeaus."  I notice this sign
> requires two characters.  Does the backslash indicate that it is velar?
[R\] is the _uvular_ trill (IPA inverted upper-case R)

No, the backslash has nothing to do with velarity, uvularity, trillness or
anything else. It is merely a method of extending the use of ASCII
characters. I quote from J.C. wells of the University of London (the guy
responsible for X-SAMPA):
"However no segmental role is currently defined for the backslash [in
SAMPA]......I propose that we....bring the backslash into service as a
kind of universal diacritic, meaning 'the preceding character is to be
interpreted in a special way'. IPA alphabetic characters not yet assigned
a SAMPA code can be given a two-place code, in which the second character
is \."

As far as I know, a velar trill is not a possibility. there is certainly
no IPA symbol for it.

> The retroflex flap, a sound I think I invented, which a Teonivar would say
> when pronouncing "Erahenahil" [paradise].  I've given two detailed
> descriptions of that sound in a thread called "Usage: rhotics, etc."   Is
> it
> invented or not?
I guess you did invent it for Teonaht, but sort of like re-inventing the
wheel  :)
The sound does exist - the X-sampa & CXS is [r`]

> The alveolar flap (no retroflex), which is like the flapped Latin "r" but
> articulated at the palate or post alveolar.  What a Teonivar would say
> when
> pronouncing "yry firrimby" ("me all grateful," or "thank you.")
>
> Maybe Sampa can't cover all of these.
X-SAMPA and CXS can cover all that IPA covers. But you've got me stumped
on this one. The flap or tap [4] (IPA "small Latin fish-hook r" [ɾ]) is
given by IPA as dental/alveolar/postalveolar. You can specify it as dental
in CXS thus [4_d]. But i don't know how you specify that it is
postalveolar. Hopefully, someone can enlighten us.

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
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as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]