'rhotic plosives' (was: laterals)

On Wednesday, February 11, 2004, at 05:26 AM, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Javier BF wrote:
[snip - I agree with Nik on the snipped bits]

>> Most taps/flaps and trills _are_ plosive, whether
>> they are 'counted' as "plosives" or not.
Not the apical trills I've heard from Scots people nor the apical trills I
heard during my 22 year sojourn in Wales - no, for that matter, from
Spaniards I've met.  But as I've met rather less of the latter, it may be
the Spanish speakers I've met are not typical.

But let's be precise about our terminology.
PLOSION = the outward movement of air upon release from a closure (stop).

PLOSIVE - a type of stop consonant (i.e. one involving closure) whose
release is accompanied by plosion.

Therefore, for a consonant to be a plosive, there must be closure followed
by plosion.

Even if, for the say of argument at this point, I accept a complete
closure is made in rapid succession in a trill (whether made with the apex
of the tongue or with the uvular [the latter is heard in certain regions
of north Wales]), I have never been aware of any plosion of the release.

I'm less familiar with flaps (books say it occurs in RP pronunciation of
_very_ - but that's a good half century out of date, i think), but when i
have heard them I've not been aware of any noticeable plosion.

>> Castilian
>> Spanish -rr- is nothing but a quick succession of
>> alveolar d's, that is, a quick succession of alveolar
>> stops.
>
> I wouldn't call it that!  It's produced completely differently.  -rr- is
> not produced by raising and lowering the tongue in rapid succession, but
> by the airstream causing the tip of the tongue to vibrate.
Quite - the top of the tongue _vibrates_ (that's why it's often called an
_apical_ trill); similarly, the uvular vibrates when a uvular trill is
made. There's no way a uvular trill is a rapid succession of uvular voiced
plosives.

> A tap would
> make sense to call a very brief stop,
OK (as I said, I'm less familiar with flaps) - brief tho it may be, is the
duration long enough for the block air stream to produce any significant
plosion?

>  altho given that many languages do
> distinguish between taps and stops, it seems logical to distinguish
> them.
>
>> English r is
>> usually an apico-postalveolar approximant-flap,
>
> Approximant-flap?  What's that mean?  How can something be both a flap
> and an approximant?
Quite.  This is absolutely confusing! Above Javier is maintaining that a
flap is a plosive, i.e. the airstream is blocked and then released with
plosion.

An approximant is, as I understand it, a frictionless continuant.
CONTINUANT = a sound produced with incomplete closure of the vocal tract.

I fail to see how something can be both a plosive and an approximant!

Even if we discount the 'plosive' description of a flap, nevertheless, we
can say that a flap is caused a rapid contact between two organs of
articulation. How can you have a rapid contact (i.e. rapid closure) and
the thing still be a flap?

Extremely puzzled.

Ray
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