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

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....
>

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