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

Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:

> Thinks: if there's a retroflex lateral approximant - and there is in some
> Indic languages - why ain't there any retroflex lateral fricatives? (Umm -
> a bit difficult to pronounce).
ObMyWeirdSwedish: Certain varieties of Swedish, mine included, has a sublaminal
retroflex lateral approximant as realization of /rl/. Now, this isn't very
strange in itself, but what _is_ weird is that until a few years ago, I did not
have it, but realized /rl/ as simply [l_d]. The distinction entered my usage
quite unconsciously, and I do not know from where I acquired it, altho the
written form of these words must've helped.

I can produce sublaminal lateral fricative too, and I do not find it any harder
than your run-of-the-mill apico-alveolar lateral fric, so I would not be
surprised if it's used somewhere. The lack of an IPA sign need only mean that
no language distinguishes phonologically from apico-alveolars, and since, I
believe, both retroflex-alveolar distinctions and lateral fricatives are
relatively rare typologically, the lack of such languages might simply be due
to combinatorics.

                                                 Andreas

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