Zompist Bboard Again

anteallach wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2019 12:54 am Isn't part of the confusion down to there being two main types of American English /r/ (and NURSE vowel) one of which (the "bunched" one) isn't very well described by standard phonetic terminology?

• If is syllabic it is a uvular approximant without labialization.
• If it is not syllabic:
  • If it is initial or following a rounded vowel it is labialized.
  • If it comes after an alveolar or postalveolar consonant it has postalveolar coarticulation.
  • It is a uvular approximant, except on rare occasions when in the coda, where then it may be a uvular trill.

Whimemsz wrote: ↑Mon Sep 09, 2019 2:09 pm I don't know about the rest of it, but there is at least one Dravidian language with two phonemic degrees of vowel retroflexion, Badaga. (I don't know if there are others, I only know about Badaga because of the UCLA Phonetics Lab page.)

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2019 9:27 am

anteallach wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2019 12:54 am Isn't part of the confusion down to there being two main types of American English /r/ (and NURSE vowel) one of which (the "bunched" one) isn't very well described by standard phonetic terminology?

The kind I have is the bunched one, and in the end it comes down to:

• If is syllabic it is a uvular approximant without labialization.
• If it is not syllabic:
  • If it is initial or following a rounded vowel it is labialized.
  • If it comes after an alveolar or postalveolar consonant it has postalveolar coarticulation.
  • It is a uvular approximant, except on rare occasions when in the coda, where then it may be a uvular trill.

anteallach wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2019 2:14 am It's pretty clear that the usual American English "bunched r" isn't a typical uvular approximant; if it were then it wouldn't be so hard to describe properly. (Not saying that your /r/ isn't uvular.)

John Wells's blog on the subject (which shows it isn't just an American thing) has a discussion of it which suggests that it's a dorsal approximant with a distinctive hollow formed by the tongue behind the main constriction. I can make an approximant like this in the velar area which sounds /r/-like.

anteallach wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2019 2:14 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2019 9:27 am

anteallach wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2019 12:54 am Isn't part of the confusion down to there being two main types of American English /r/ (and NURSE vowel) one of which (the "bunched" one) isn't very well described by standard phonetic terminology?

The kind I have is the bunched one, and in the end it comes down to:

• If is syllabic it is a uvular approximant without labialization.
• If it is not syllabic:
  • If it is initial or following a rounded vowel it is labialized.
  • If it comes after an alveolar or postalveolar consonant it has postalveolar coarticulation.
  • It is a uvular approximant, except on rare occasions when in the coda, where then it may be a uvular trill.

It's pretty clear that the usual American English "bunched r" isn't a typical uvular approximant; if it were then it wouldn't be so hard to describe properly. (Not saying that your /r/ isn't uvular.)

John Wells's blog on the subject (which shows it isn't just an American thing) has a discussion of it which suggests that it's a dorsal approximant with a distinctive hollow formed by the tongue behind the main constriction. I can make an approximant like this in the velar area which sounds /r/-like.

Zaarin wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2019 5:36 pm Can confirm that this is precisely the nature of my bunched-R. I transcribe it as [ɹ̱ˁ]. I wish I could transfer the knowledge of how to produce that weird pharyngealized R to producing Syriac's emphatic consonants...