Re: 3 Phonetics-Related Q's

On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 08:16:43 -0400, I. K. Peylough <ikpeylough@...> wrote:

>>> 2.   Why is the [r\] at the end of words (American English) often
>>> transcribed as [@`] in dictionaries? Where is the difference? I know the
>>> little hook i sf ro indicating rhoticity -- are there other
>>> vowels/consonants/sounds in general that can be rhoticized?
>>
>>Any vowel can be rhoticized. If you try to pronounce the English word
>>"ear" (as in rhotic dialects) as a single segment, you end up with
>>something like /i`/ or maybe /I`/. It involves forming a channel in the
>>middle of the tongue and retracting the tongue root, I think.
>
>I thought rhotacizing involved turning the tongue tip up.
>My understanding is that [@`] is to [r\] as [e] is to [i] (more or less). I
>think it occurs in dictionaries because the editors' accents have tended to
>be a compromise between non-rhotic and fully rhotic. I don't have any
>studies to refer to :( so take that with a grain of salt.
My understanding is that [@`] and [r\=] are mostly used as variant notations
of the same sound, a rhotic pronunciation of /r=/ or /@r/.

>Incidently, that was how I was taught to pronounce German < er >
That sounds to me like a heavy English accent. The pronunciation is mostly
indicated by [6], though there are variants (but none of them is [r\=] or [@`]).

>>> 3.   Did clicks arise through affricates? I don't know why affricates,
>>> but something in my mind tells me so.
Couldn't in the first non-pulmonal release in a serie of stops be
phonetically described as a click, e.g. the release of the /p/ in _captive_?
If this is true, then clicks might possibly evolve in this way.

g_0ry@_ˆs:
j. 'mach' wust