In a message dated 1/6/2002 5:03:29 PM Central Standard Time, ragnarok@pobox.com writes:I would like to also see use of varying sounds other than r - for instance, I do when I remember, but years of habit die hard and I do slip until I notice I am generating ambiguities between {V'V) and {VV}. Cherlin: <Actually, therre arre severral distinctive Amurrcan 'r's, and some that disappeah entially.> I haven't seen anything lately on this claim, but the last I saw (and its ancestors for about a decade) was that, since just about everyone could come to regularly distinguish between r'd and r-less cases, the allophones of /r/ involved was not 0 but something way off the normal English spectrum, ranging -- various r'less dialects -- from pitch-stress-juncture to pharyngealization through retroflexion and a number of other odd things with the back of the tongue . They just hid a bit, but they don't disappear. Unless something new has turned up beyond the old mechanical sound spectrograms. |