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

Ray Brown wrote:
> I cannot answer for John, but I've been assuming that Sally was talking
> about the |r| in |rack|, not the |r| in |car|.
No, it's always been about post-vocalic r.  See the quote below...

>
> 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. I pronounce |car| as
> [k_hA:].  On some words we use centering diphthongs, e.g. |here| [hi@].
Right; again, see below.
(snip some discussion as to whether r-colored vowels should be called
"retroflexed")
>
> 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'.
>
> 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.
Personally, I don't find it confusing; retroflexed can refer to a state of
the tongue (in vowel articulations) as well as to the POA.
>
> 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.
That may be true of those dialects; IMO it's not the case in Amer.Engl., at
least not in monosyllables like "car, ear, core" etc. Below is a quote from
a long msg. I sent yesterday (Subj: "back to rhotic miscellany"; apparently
it reached the list since Charlie replied to it, but it has yet to come back
to me. It's in the archive in the Nov. Week 1 list). In any case, I'm
suggesting that -Vr# ~-VrC# sequences might better be viewed as diphthongs
involving the centralized/rhotic [@^] (IPA schwa with hook)
------------------------------
QUOTE:
Not to confuse the issue, but note that [r\] (IPA inverted r) is not
precisely specified as to dental/alv/post-alv. in the chart at
http://cassowary.free.fr/Linguistics/cxschart.png -- note too that it's the
symbol used for "consonantal" (pre-vocalic) r, as in the ex. [r\i.&kt]
"react" under "Suprasegmentals". No argument there, I think.

It's post-vocalic, semi-vocalic r that's the problem.  In close phonetic
transcriptions, it is often indicated as a _modification_ of the vowel, esp.
of [@]/[3] (stressed/unstr. resp.), so ['k_hIl@^], [b3^d] "killer, bird".
Since [@^, 3^] are unitary vowel sounds (no transitional movement of the
tongue as in "are, ear"), it suggests that in other post-voc. environments
they're functioning as glides and producing a sort of diphthong-- just like
superscript _U and _I in e.g. [a_U, a_I]. Thus in a close phonetic
transcription of "card", perhaps we should write [k_ha_@^d];  if we drawl
the word, we get almost 2-syl ['k_ha.@^d], just as drawled "cloud" will come
out [kla.ud].  Obviously, to an audience of Engl. speakers it isn't
necessary to be that precise-- consequently the various shorthand ("broad
phonetic") variants [br\=d] (or even [br=d] though that's bad phonetics, OK
as phonemic), [kIlr\=], [kar\d]....
-------------------------------
(ASIDE: Ray proposes Brit. dial. "car" [ka`]. I think Americans have much
more of a diphthong-like sound. We may have pure rhotic/retro. vowels in
polysyllables e.g. "Carter, porter, gargle" perhaps
['k-ha`t@^]['p_hO`t@^]['gA`g@l] spoken at normal tempo--though if I drawl
these out unnaturally, I still get that intrusive @^ offglide. Note that I
don't feel it's necessary to use the "retroflexed approximant" symbol [r`\]
IPA inverted r with tail-- I haven't yet gone to an IPA sound-sample site,
but I suspect [r`\] is NOT standard English/American /r/ in any environment.
-------------------------------
(resume quote)
Note that in non-rhotic dialects, [@^] simply loses its retroflexion but
survives as an [@] offglide, as in "beer" [bI_@], NYC-ese "sure, shore"
[SU_@] (the vowel is actually somewhere between [U] and [o]) or compensatory
length (Tristan's Australian [bI:], RP "court" [k_hO:t]-- quite on a par
with the dropping of the glide-[j] is Southern US, "I" [A:], "fire" [fAr\].
END QUOTE
----------------------------------

> But as I cannot hear Sally speak...,
I spoke with her once on the phone, and didn't notice anything peculiar
(i.e. radically different from me) about her r's, though that was not the
subject :-))

..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.
I don't think so; I think we have that diphthongal [@^]-like offglide. >
> If Sally does indeed have the retroflex approximant here, then CXS
> certainly has a symbol for it, albeit a compound symbol, namely [r\`].
>
> 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|?
No to both questions, just speaking for self. For one thing, initial r
usually involves a slight bit of rounding (note that children just beginning
to speak often confuse onset /r/ (and /l/) with /w/).

Oh me, oh my, this poor bedraggled horse!! We ought all to gather someday in
a hall (The First Int'l Conlang Conference! [YAEPT parasession]) and compare
pronunciations ad nau...er infinitum. Failing that, we really ought to
create a website of recordings for those interested. Parallel with "Yer Ugly
Mug" (is it still alive?) we could call it "Yer Ugly Voice"
:-))))))))))))))))))))))