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

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Sunday, November 7, 2004, 20:50
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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Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>