Re: Vowels?

En réponse à John Cowan <cowan@...>:

>
> Well, for me qua American, there is no retroflexion in my /r/
> whatsoever;
> it is the approximant version of the fricative z-with-curly-tail
> (too lazy to look up X-SAMPA equivalent): the tip of my tongue is
> behind my lower teeth.
You mean an approximant version of the alveolopalatal voiced fricative found in
Polish? I didn't even know that could exist :))) . By the way, in X-SAMPA it is
noted /z\/, but no approximant variant exists, whether in X-SAMPA or IPA. I've
tried to pronounce it, and to me, it sounds nearly like [r\_j] (a palatalised
British {r}). Strange idiolect you have here :))) .

   I believe this is also Mandarin /r/.

I'd been told that Mandarin /r/ was the best example of a retroflex
approximant: [r\`]? It is not retroflex?

>
> What's really amazing about this is what a variety of sounds can
> all come across as /r/, even if with a foreign or cross-dialect
> accent.  How is it that the difference between an alveolopalatal
> approximant and a uvular trill can be heard as mere sub-phonological
> surface noise?  Someone who rendered /T/ as [X] would experience
> no such tolerance.
>
I know what you mean. It's this famous rhotic quality. I remembered that the
subject of rhoticity had already been discussed on the list a while ago, and a
search at the archives proved useful:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0109A&L=conlang&P=R2293 :))

In that mail Dirk Elzinga explains that rhoticity is acoustically defined by
a "lowered third formant" (whatever that means. Is there any page on the web
that explains how to describe sounds in acoustic terms? It's a discipline
called phonetics isn't it?). But there are a lot of ways to achieve a lowered
third formant, among which trills, taps, uvular approximants or fricatives,
retroflexion for consonnants or 'rhoticity' for vowels. By the way, in that
post Dirk describes exactly your way of making the American /r/, which makes a
sound with little acoustic difference compared to a retroflex approximant!

It explains why so many different sounds in human languages are seen as rhotic
and confused with other rhotic sounds when people try to learn another language.

This is a quite interesting topic. It would deserve a separate paragraph in a
Conlang FAQ, since this topic of rhoticity seems to come back regularly on the
list.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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