Re: Czech orthography (was Re: Lack of ambiguity in Czech, was Re: EU allumettes)

>> an r with the diacritic for lowering: [r_o].
>
>  The trick is to _narrow_ the articulation cave during the trills
>to get a constant fricative perception. Therefore the diacritic for
>rasing should be used, just as it's proposed by Unicode.org in
>their chart <http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf>.
Oh, yes. You're right. I hadn't noticed that the
diacritic used is the one for raising instead of the
one for lowering. The visual difference between both
is so minimal that may easily go unnoticed.

The problem (apart from their low visual distinctiveness)
is that the usual meaning of these diacritics is to
affect the degree of closure of the point of articulation
of the original symbol, and not to affect a different,
secondary degree of closure in the cavity that is left
elsewhere in the mouth.

That is, in the sound represented by [r], the point of
articulation is the alveolar ridge and the tip of the
tongue, which produces a quick series of total closures.
Thus, this degree of closure of [r], which is already
total, cannot be further _raised_. And in fact, Czech
r^ is _lowered_ in this respect, because the closures
are usually not fully produced, the tip of the tongue
peforming instead a series of merely very close
approximations, so as to allow a continous flow of air.

OTOH, Czech r^ is a more complex articulation than
the alveolar trill, because it involves a secondary
articulation performed with the blade of the tongue,
which is raised towards the postalveolar area narrowing
the cavity next to the alveolar main point of articulation,
producing the accompanying sh-like frication to the
alveolar lowered trilling. So, from this other point of
view, using the diacritic for raising makes sense. But,
apart from introducing an apparent contradiction because
the main -the alveolar trilling- part of the articulation
does not undergo a raising but lowering, this point of
view centered on a secondary part of the articulation
is not the usual one for interpreting those diacritics,
because a raised [T_r] is interpreted without doubt as
a plosive interdental and never as lowering of the main
point of articulation of [T] from a fricative to an
interdental approximant with an accompanying _raising_
of the blade of the tongue that narrows the cavity left
further back in the mouth producing an accompanying
sh-like frication.

Cheers,
Javier

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