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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Brown" <ray.brown@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 2:20 AM
Subject: Re: Need some help with terms: was "rhotic miscellany"


> On Sunday, November 7, 2004, at 02:59 , Sally Caves wrote:
>
> [snip]
>> I just can't duplicate what John is describing and still pronounce "car"
>> the
>> way I do it.
>
> OOOOPS!!!!
>
> Looks like some of us have been writing at cross purposes - probably not
> for the first time in this thread  :)
>
> I cannot answer for John, but I've been assuming that Sally was talking
> about the |r| in |rack|, not the |r| in |car|. While I have an alveolar
> approximant for the first, I have no consonant at all for the second!
Well naturally!  You're English!  :)  I was actually talking about all |r|s
as I pronounce them, and as many do in America, but it seems that the way I
put it, yesterday, only final |r| got discussed.  For me, there is tongue
curling in all of them, but to different degrees.  I made a list of |r|s
below as I pronounce them:

Initial:

road    apical flexion towards the hard palate, simultaneous rounding of
lips.
rudder  same
raid     same, with less rounding of lips.
reed   same, with even less rounding of lips.  Tongue in all cases still in
apical flexion or retroflex approximant.

Final:

CAR
    tongue dropped and pulled back, apical flexion towards the hard palate
but not so close to the palate as in "road."
FAIR
    tongue not so dropped, but apical flexion towards the hard palate.  It's
a diphthong.
EAR
    tongue raised to accommodate front vowel, but dropped suddenly to cause
retroflexion.  Definitely a diphthing.  Imagine German hier, but the -er is
    drawn back suddenly.  The Terminator does it too slowly.
AQUIRE
    same thing, only more movement of the tongue back and the tip curled
towards palate.

Intervocalic:

AMERICAN
    same thing as with "fair."  Only the ghost of an /I/.
VERY
    same thing.  Tongue moves forward and the back and sides of the tongue
move up to give slightly more /i/ sound.
SORRY
    same thing as with "car."
TEARY
    same thing as with "ear."
FURRY
    one of my favorite words.  The first syllable is already poised as a
retroflex.  In North Philadelphia, I've heard this pronounced /'f^r\'i/.  A
solid "uh" sound
    for the "u"; same with 'hurry, ferry, and Merry Christmas."  "Ah ya
gonna take the fuh-ry, Waltuh?"  (my old boyfriend's sister).  "Walter"
pronounced as
    you would hear it in Brooklyn.

Pre-consonantal

PARK
    As in "far"; the final velar stop doesn't move the tongue.
HARVARD YARD
    A common phrase used to mimic a certain Boston accent.  For me, the "v"
does little to bring the tongue forward.  Stubborn retroflex r.
FARED
     The |r| is brought forward slightly because of the front vowel and the
alveolar final stop.
FEARED
     Same.
GIRLY MAN.
     One of our favorite phrases, these days.  Always pronounced as Arnold
would pronounce it.  Tongue pulled back severely, no retroflexion.  Me:
same as
     with "furry," and |l| pronounced at post alveolar position instead of
further forward.

Post-consonantal

PROSE.
   By the time I've closed my lips for the |p| I've already got the tongue
in curled position pointing up at the hard palate.
TREE
   Not quite the same.  The alveolar stop requires a scrape of the tip of
the tongue back to cause retroflexion.  If  I compare it with "tip," the "t"
in that word
    is articulated much further forward.
CRAM
    Lots of rounding of the lips, with simultaneous curling of the tongue
upwards.

Final post-consonantal

BUTTER
   This is a flap, where the tongue touches the post alveolar point for |t|
and swipes back.  No vowel sound between t and r.
STAMMER
    Not a flap, because of the labial, but the lips push out a bit as the
tongue curls back into a retroflex position, pointing, as ever, at the
palate.
LEADER
   pronounced almost exactly as "butter," except the "d" is further forward
on the alveolar ridge.  BTW, it sounds exactly as I would pronounce "litre."
UPPER
    Rather like "stammer."


> As I think it is well known, in the urban speech of south east England &
> in RP there is no rhotic consonant in syllable coda.
Yes.  The most commonly mimicked feature of British English.  What we Murkin
kids did when we were faking British English, along with exaggerated /A/
sounds for "can't" and "dance" (all without any nuance).

 I pronounce |car| as
> [k_hA:].  On some words we use centering diphthongs, e.g. |here| [hi@].
Yes... all badly faked when I was eleven years old.  "I say, old chop, I
KANT STOND it, heah."

> Now many rural dialects do use r-colored vowels or diphthongs here and,
> indeed, in certain circumstance I occasionally use them also. These
> _vowels_ are, as I have written earlier in the thread, termed 'retroflex'
> by some people because the r-coloring is given tongue movement similar to
> retroflexion. It does of course describe the _manner_ in which these
> vowels are pronounced.
Great!  What I thought!

> But as Marcos has written, and I agreed with him, this usage is confusing
> as it is *not* the same usage as IPA point of articulation of consonants.
> IPA charts name he feature denoted by the diacritic which CXS represents
> thus [`] (my mailer doesn't seem to like the actual IPA symbol) as
> 'rhotocity'.
Right.  I suggested that we revise the CXS a bit.  But it looks as though
there is already a graph for it.

> I suspect this is where the confusion has come into this thread. We have
> not all been writing about the same thing or using the term 'retroflex' in
> the same way.
This was decided yesterday, too.  Me, grousing about the term "retroflex" as
a Place of Articulation and insulting Marcos; long bouts of humorous
apologies back and forth. :)

> Now, back to |car|. The rhotic dialects of south England & the midlands
> have [k_hA`], that is [A] pronounced with retroflexion of the tongue, i.e.
>  r-colored or rhoticized. But there's no consonant. It's rather like the
> nasal consonants in, say, French where a final nasal consonant ha been
> dropped leaving the vowel pronounced with nasalization. Similarly, in the
> rhotic dialects I am familiar with, the final /r/ has disappeared as a
> consonant, leaving only a rhoticized vowel.
>
> I've assumed - probably because the effect is similar and I have been
> _hearing_ a sound I'm familiar with & not _listening_ carefully - that the
> same was true of the American r-colored vowels. Indeed, because I
> understood similar vowels occurred in modern standard Chinese as well as
> in Merkan English & some Brit varieties, I had once considrred using |r|
> as a vowel in BrSc - but was dissuaded after disussion on this list.
> But as I cannot hear Sally speak,
I toyed with the madcap idea of making a huge soundbyte of my |r|s, |r|s as
I've heard them in Bucks County north Philly,  as I've heard them in England
and Wales, and as our honorable California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
pronounces them.  :)  I'm clearly trying to escape from reading
dissertations.

I can make no judgment and it may well
> be that she and many other Merkans do have a separate _consonant_ here,
> namely the retroflex approximant. Certainly some Scots speakers seem to
> make a separate aprroximant consonant in such positions (other Scots have
> trilled /r/ here, as do Welsh speakers).
I so miss it! :(

> If Sally does indeed have the retroflex approximant here, then CXS
> certainly has a symbol for it, albeit a compound symbol, namely [r\`].
Oh, okay.  That's a good one.  But as John and Charlie have noted, they
don't include retroflexion in their FINAL |r|; I have yet to hear back from
them, but I wonder if they detect an apical retroflexion in any of the other
combinations I've given above, especially initial |r|.  I said I found it
hard to imitate the final |r|s they described without it sounding like a
British |r|, but I was finally able to approximate something like what John
described.  I think that |r| in America is either relaxed or tense in
varying degrees all over the States, and these variations also need some
kind of IPA graph.

> Do those speakers who have [r\`] in syllable coda, use the same
> approximant in onset position? In other words, do Merkans generally
> pronounce /r/ in |car| the same as the /r/ in |rack|?
I think the final |r| is slightly more relaxed in "car" than the initial |r|
in "rack."  The surrounding vowels and consonants affect it.  See above.

Sally

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