Re: Need some help with terms: was "rhotic miscellany"

Sally Caves scripsit:

> >Mindful of this, I taught myself to say "car" and "rack" with my own /r/,
> >with an alveolar approximant, and with a retroflex approximant.  I tested
> >these as minimal pairs and as the full triplet on two native speakers of
> >American English, one rhotic and one partly non-rhotic (typical speakers
> >of NYC English have both rhotic and non-rhotic varieties at command,
> >and use more rhotics as the register rises).  Nobody could hear any of
> >the differences.
>
> Okay, that explains a lot.   When did you teach this method to yourself?
Yesterday.

> Were you aware of what you were doing?  (this sounds as though it was
> a self-conscious experiment.)
It was.  Man "experiments" on wife and daughter!  Film at 11.

> Did you start out with an ordinary retroflex r and change it?
I don't think so.  I'm not sure when I first noticed that my /r/ was
not retroflex; it's only in the course of this discussion that I
learned to characterize my /r/ accurately, and it was only yesterday
that I ran my little test.

> [Retroflex and alveopalatal s] sound different to me.  They have
> pitches, when I make them, and the retroflex s gives almost a whole
> lower note, like a chickadee calling. The retroflex seems to pull the
> tongue back on the alveola.
Yes, they do sound different, unlike the various American /r/s.  I was
simply making the point that "place of articulation" refers to tongue
position *and* position along the labial-to-uvular continuum at the
same time.

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