On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 21:42:18 -0700, Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>
wrote:
>Carsten Becker wrote:
>
>> Hey all!
>>
>> I've got some phonetics-related questions:
(usefule links snipped)
>> 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. Incidently, that
was how I was taught to pronounce German < er >
>> 3. Did clicks arise through affricates? I don't know why affricates,
>> but something in my mind tells me so.
>
>AFAIK, nobody knows where clicks came from in languages that have them.
>No language with clicks is known to descend from a language without.
What about Xhosa? Isn't that a Bantu language?
I