Re: Chinese Dialect Question

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Estel Telcontar wrote:

>  --- Adam Walker ha tera a:
> > And of course Rhotic dialects of English have two
> > rhotics in complementary distribution.
Actually, no. Many English rhotic dialects of English use the same
consonants in both cases; the principal of my high school did that (or
rather, he does it but it's not my high school any more). It was rather
disconcerting, to be honest, as it was an otherwise Southern BrE accent,
and though his r was in the same style as mine, it had the distribution of
Americans'.

(Perhaps it was more disconcerting for me because my dialect in uncareful
speech is happy enough to drop its schwas, without a change in the r;
[&r\d] would only ever be heard as 'arid' because of this.)

> Which two rhotics are you talking about?  Two different allophones of
> "r"?
> If we're including allophones, then what about [4], used by many
> dialects for intervocalic "t" and "d"?  It's even in complementary
> distribution with "r", I think:
>
> (note: for convenience, I'm going to use [r]/r/ for the English
> approximant "r".)
>
> /bEri/   [bEri]   Barry/berry
> /bEti/   [bE4i]   Betty (or "beddy", if such a word existed.)
You seem to be confused about the meaning of 'complementary distribution'.
It means that one is found only in places that the other isn't, and they
are allophones of each other.

So AmE [r\] and [4] are *not* in complementary distribution, but (I think
it's) [r\] and [r\`] are (the latter being found when acting as a vowel or
when not before a vowel, e.g. in bird, hurry or beard).

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy

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