Re: retroflex consonants

On Tuesday 28 January 2003 9:06 pm, Josh Brandt-Young wrote:
> Quoth Danny Wier:
> > American English (r)
>
> Curiously enough, two of my cousins (and I suspect they're not alone) have
> retroflex affricates instead of alveolars preceding /r/. I was reading a
> story the younger of the two had written last year, and noticed that she
> spelled "tree" as "chree" and "drive" as "jrive"; and a few tests were
> enough to show that these were at the same POA as the /r/. I think my /t/s
> and /d/s are somewhat retroflexish in these positions as well, though more
> in a Bengali than Sanskrit sense.
>
> Cheers,
>    Josh
>
Hmmm.  I generally lower my /r/ to alveolar following an Alveolar
stop/fricative. Incidentally, I would describe the position of [tS] (and /r/)
as postalveolar, rather than retroflex.  It's not far enough back to be
retroflex, but it's too far up to be alveolar, which makes it postalveolar.