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

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Sunday, November 7, 2004, 1:15
Mark J. Reed wrote:

> Sally> PLACE of articulation? So retroflexion of the tongue would > Sally> require it to touch the palate?
No. However, it can only affect consonants that involve the tip of the tongue; IPA doesn't allow for retroflexed velars or labials.
> > Well, as with the other POAs, not necessarily touch, but at least point > at; how much touching, if any, depends on whether it's an approximant, > fricative, or plosive. But other than that nit, as I understand it, > that is correct. Look at an IPA chart - "Retroflex" is a column, along > with the other POAs, in between "Postalveolar" and "Palatal".
That is true, but retroflexion can also be a modification of the manner of articulation, e.g. of vowels.
> > .... Retroflex sounds are made by > touching the palate - with the tip of the tongue, which must be curled > back to accomplish this. > > But I may have hit upon a source of confusion. I interpret "retroflex" > to require a *complete* backwards curling of the tongue, such that it is > the *bottom* of the tongue tip which makes contact (or nearly so) with > the palate.
Disagree. That's one way, though I suspect not the usual way, of pronouncing e.g. Hindi "t., d.". Curling the tongue tip back so far that the underside contacts the palate seems a rather awkward motion, though perhaps ANADEW As I said in an earlier msg., X-ray pictures of American /r/ show the body of the tongue bunched up, and the tongue tip somewhat raised; how far it raises/curls seems to vary individually. The more you curl it, the more prominent the /r/ sound. Some critic once complained about Calif. surfer music, that the /r/s were so "hard"; there is an NPR announcer who has very "hard" r's in this sense.
> > So I am no longer certain that my R is not, in fact, retroflex. But I > got the impression by reading this list that the retroflex approximant > was a rare sound; in fact, the CXS for it is a trigraph, [r\`]. Which > doesn't jibe with it being the standard American rhotic.
I'll have to check out an IPA sound-site. There is a retroflexed /r./ in Tamil and relatives-- the few times I've heard it, it's very hard to place, hard to reproduce; sounds more like a _d_ of some sort....
>

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Herman Miller <hmiller@...>