Re: OT: Phonetics (IPA)

Andreas Johansson wrote:>
Nikhil Kinta wrote:
> >
> > But, if you consider the sounds that they produce, definitely, alveolars
> > sound closer to retroflexes than dentals.
> >
> > The difference in opinion may be due to the fact that even if two
languages
> > have alveolar t and d, both language may pronounce it differently.
>
> My native language is Swedish.
>
> I'm no phonetician, and cannot say whether alveolars are acoustically
closer
> to retroflexes or dentals, but I am unable to consistently tell dentals
and
> alveolars (alveolars as heard in the varieties of English I've heard)
apart,
> whereas retroflexes sound quite different to me.
>
There is a very good reason for that.  Dentals and alveolars, usually (and I
suspect by definition in IPA) are produced with a relatively wide area of
the front of the tongue in contact with the teeth/alveolum.  (Technically,
they are _laminar_.) The body of the tongue is relatively flat.

In retroflexion, the tip of the tongue is curled back, so that only the tip,
or at least a relatively smaller area than in a dental/alv. articulation,
contacts the roof of the mouth anywhere from the alveolum to a bit further
back (technically, _apical_) .  Curling/raising the tongue-tip produces a
small hollow in the body of the tongue.  That changes the shape of the
resonating chamber in the mouth, which changes the quality of the
surrounding vowels (which would show up on a spectrogram).

The tongue movements can definitely be shown by  X-ray photography or less
dangerously by a  "palatogram", in which the roof of the mouth is coated
with charcoal dust; the subject then produces the desired sound, after which
by means of a largish dental mirror and a Polaroid camera, a photograph will
show where the tongue wiped away the charcoal.

Thoughtful investigators (like the one I had) will flavor the charcoal with
a little instant-cocoa powder. (It's still yucky.)  And when inserting the
dental mirror, the investigator should take care not to trigger the
subject's gag reflex.

That was many years ago....No doubt with the ever-onward march of
technology, mini-cams, fiber-optics etc. the process nowadays isn't quite so
traumatic..........:-)))

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