Re: Geminate taps/flaps

Eric Christopherson skrev:
 > Do geminate taps/flaps occur (phonetically)? Or do they
 > generally surface as trills?

In my Swedish pronunciation single /r/ is [4] or [r\`] and
geminate /rr/ is [r] or [r\`:]. The reson for the [r\`]
variant is an ongoing sound change, which I apply variably.

Italian also has /r/ = [4] and /rr/ = [r], and the /4/ and
/r/ of Spanish come from Latin /r/ and /rr/ respectively. It
seems that /r/ = [4] and /rr/ = [r] was regarded as the
normal pronunciation in Sanskrit also -- although /r=/ and
the marginal /r=:/ must have been [r=] of different length.

As for [r`] it is, at least in origin, an allophone of /d`/
in Indo-Aryan languages, its geminate counterpart is /d`d`/.
In Scandinavian dialects /r`/ arose from */rD/, although /l/
later merged into /r`/. Geminate /r`r`/, which always is
from */ll/, is realized as [l`r`] -- i.e. a cacuminal
lateral with flapped release -- in the dialects I know.

(One strange effect of the ingoing change to [r\`] in
Swedish is that many young people avoid C4 clusters by
inserting a schwa, so that _tre_ '3' becomes [t@'4e:] and
_groda_ 'frog' becomes [g@'4u:da], but then these same
speakers have [t@'v\o:] for _två_ '2'. Perhaps Swedish is
in the process of getting rid of its consonant clusters?

FWIW I myself have [r`] only as an allophone of /l/ after
labials. It is fully distinct from [l`] and [d`] but in free
variation with [l]!)
--
/BP 8^)>

Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

--

"Ge dig, Jedi!"
				-- A Sith from Gothenburg

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