poly-rhotics (was: Chinese Dialect Question)

On Thursday, October 2, 2003, at 06:29 , John Cowan wrote:

> Garth Wallace scripsit:
>> JS Bangs wrote:
>>> Mark J. Reed sikyal:
>>>
>>> Furthermore, most languages have exactly one rhotic
>>
>> Is this a universal, or are there some languages with more than one?
Nope to first question - yep to the second.

> Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese for sure.
Not only Brazilian Portuguese either - the Portuguese of Portugal also has
two, as does Catalan also.

Welsh also has two: |r| which is trilled (usually apically, in some parts
of the north, uvularly) and |rh| which is the aspirated/voiceless counter-
part of the former.
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On Thursday, October 2, 2003, at 06:12 , James Campbell wrote:

> Well, Spanish for one distinguishes between |r| and |rr| (supply your own
> phonology as appropriate). But IIUC the place of articulation is the same.
Yeah - but the _manner_ of articulation is different. |r| is flapped, |rr|
is trilled (initial |r| is pronounced like |rr|).  The same is true of
Catalan and was once so of Portuguese; but the later now pronounce |rr| as
/R/ IIRC.

> A conlang that differentiated between 3 Rs would be kinda cool...
You mean like Scots Gaelic?
(SAMPA) /r/, /r_e/ (i.e. velarized-r, real IPA puts a tilde through it),
and /r'/ (palatalized).

I believe some Irish Gaelic dialects have four: /r/, /r_e/, /r'/, /r_e'/.
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On Thursday, October 2, 2003, at 06:42 , Roger Mills wrote:

[snip]
> Some Dravidian languages (and I think Proto Drav.) have 3, dental,
> alveolar
> and retroflex.
Don't know about Proto Drav, but certainly some (most?) modern Dravidian
langs have these three.

> Malayo-Polynesian languages allow the reconstruction of at least two, one
> symbolized *r (presumably dental/alv.), the other *R (presumably a velar)
> .
Yes, having two rhotics is not so uncommon.  Three is less common, but
certainly
well enough attested.  If I've remembered correctly about Irish Gaelic,
then we
have at least one example of four, and I don't imagine it would be unique.

So if a conlang is to "out-cool" natlangs on rhotics, it's got to have
more than
a paltry three.

You could have, I guess, at least eight  :-)
              dental  alveolar  retroflex  uvular
voiced         1        2         3         4

unvoiced/      5        6          7        8
aspirated

Can't think of any neat way of representing them in the Roman alphabet.

Ray
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