Zompist Bboard Again

whether retroflex simply indicates a greater amount of curl to the tongue which pushes the point of articulation back.

akamchinjir wrote: ↑Sat Sep 01, 2018 11:27 am Ladefoged and Maddieson, The Sounds of the World's Languages (25-28), distinguish between subapical palatals (which they seem to think are the true retroflexes) and apical postalveolars, though they say they don't know of any language that contrasts them. They mention Toda, Tamil, and Telugu (all Dravidian languages) as examples of languages with subapical palatals.

anteallach wrote: ↑Mon Sep 03, 2018 8:58 am

akamchinjir wrote: ↑Sat Sep 01, 2018 11:27 am Ladefoged and Maddieson, The Sounds of the World's Languages (25-28), distinguish between subapical palatals (which they seem to think are the true retroflexes) and apical postalveolars, though they say they don't know of any language that contrasts them. They mention Toda, Tamil, and Telugu (all Dravidian languages) as examples of languages with subapical palatals.

That's what they say for stops; later on in the book, where they discuss sibilants, they say that Toda distinguishes apical postalveolar and subapical palatal sibilants (p156).

Another complication is that some sibilants described as retroflexes, such as the Polish sz sound, are actually laminal; L & M call them "laminal flat postalveolars". (The "flat" here refers to the lack of palatalisation compared with other postalveolar sibilants.)

kodé wrote: ↑Sun Sep 09, 2018 9:15 pmInteresting about Polish. Makes me wonder if all the "retroflex" stops in different Australian languages are all the same, or how they vary. I think in a typical Australian system the "retroflex" stop is apical and either postalveolar or palatal and it contrasts with an apical alveolar stop and a laminal palatal/postalveolar stop. Surely there's some variation, though?

Vijay wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:46 am Apparently, subapical palatals are the typical retroflexes even for speakers of Indo-Aryan languages or at least for Hindi-speakers.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:27 am

Vijay wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 2:46 am Apparently, subapical palatals are the typical retroflexes even for speakers of Indo-Aryan languages or at least for Hindi-speakers.

It feels weird to think that native Hindi speakers would, when speaking English, render /t/ as a subapical palatal stop (to contrast with /θ/ as a dental stop).

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:27 amIt feels weird to think that native Hindi speakers would, when speaking English, render /t/ as a subapical palatal stop (to contrast with /θ/ as a dental stop).

Frislander wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 6:42 am I will note that English apical alveolar stops are frequently some degree of palatalised anyway, especially in British English. Often when you do the phonetic analysis you find that it's frequently better to transcribe it as something like [ts] than as [t]. Similarly, one can point to borrowing patterns in Goidelic languages, since those languages show a similar contrast to Indian languages between a dental (broad) and an alveolar (slender) series (with the additional complication that the alveolar stop is also palatalised). Tellingly, for Scottish Gaelic frequently English alveolar stops are borrowed as slender rather than broad, e.g. tiocaid "ticket", teanas "tennis", bonaid "bonnet", bracaist "breakfast", croit "croft" (which are typically pronounced something like [ˈt͡ʃʰiʰkət͡ʃ], [ˈt͡ʃʰanəs], [ˈponat͡ʃ], [ˈpɾaʰkəʃt͡ʃ], [ˈkɾoʰt͡ʃ]). Contrast brot [ˈpɾoʰt] "soup" from English "broth". There interestingly is an alternative strategy where the same series is borrowed as broad but with a paragogic schwa (this also seems to be a common strategy for other consonants as well), e.g. seada "shed", liosta "list". I'm not sure at this point which is the older strategy or which one represents a greater degree of nativisation, but my intuition says the former and that the latter is the more modern phenomenon as speakers gained a greater degree of English proficiency.

So clearly at least with British English (American English may be different in this regard) the alveolar stop is sufficiently consistently alveolar that speakers who have a contrast between dentals and alveolars will fairly consistently place it in the latter category.

Frislander wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 6:42 am So clearly at least with British English (American English may be different in this regard) the alveolar stop is sufficiently consistently alveolar that speakers who have a contrast between dentals and alveolars will fairly consistently place it in the latter category.

Frislander wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 6:42 am I will note that English apical alveolar stops are frequently some degree of palatalised anyway, especially in British English. Often when you do the phonetic analysis you find that it's frequently better to transcribe it as something like [ts] than as [t]. Similarly, one can point to borrowing patterns in Goidelic languages, since those languages show a similar contrast to Indian languages between a dental (broad) and an alveolar (slender) series (with the additional complication that the alveolar stop is also palatalised). Tellingly, for Scottish Gaelic frequently English alveolar stops are borrowed as slender rather than broad, e.g. tiocaid "ticket", teanas "tennis", bonaid "bonnet", bracaist "breakfast", croit "croft" (which are typically pronounced something like [ˈt͡ʃʰiʰkət͡ʃ], [ˈt͡ʃʰanəs], [ˈponat͡ʃ], [ˈpɾaʰkəʃt͡ʃ], [ˈkɾoʰt͡ʃ]). Contrast brot [ˈpɾoʰt] "soup" from English "broth". There interestingly is an alternative strategy where the same series is borrowed as broad but with a paragogic schwa (this also seems to be a common strategy for other consonants as well), e.g. seada "shed", liosta "list". I'm not sure at this point which is the older strategy or which one represents a greater degree of nativisation, but my intuition says the former and that the latter is the more modern phenomenon as speakers gained a greater degree of English proficiency.

anteallach wrote: ↑Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:55 am

Frislander wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 6:42 am I will note that English apical alveolar stops are frequently some degree of palatalised anyway, especially in British English. Often when you do the phonetic analysis you find that it's frequently better to transcribe it as something like [ts] than as [t]. Similarly, one can point to borrowing patterns in Goidelic languages, since those languages show a similar contrast to Indian languages between a dental (broad) and an alveolar (slender) series (with the additional complication that the alveolar stop is also palatalised). Tellingly, for Scottish Gaelic frequently English alveolar stops are borrowed as slender rather than broad, e.g. tiocaid "ticket", teanas "tennis", bonaid "bonnet", bracaist "breakfast", croit "croft" (which are typically pronounced something like [ˈt͡ʃʰiʰkət͡ʃ], [ˈt͡ʃʰanəs], [ˈponat͡ʃ], [ˈpɾaʰkəʃt͡ʃ], [ˈkɾoʰt͡ʃ]). Contrast brot [ˈpɾoʰt] "soup" from English "broth". There interestingly is an alternative strategy where the same series is borrowed as broad but with a paragogic schwa (this also seems to be a common strategy for other consonants as well), e.g. seada "shed", liosta "list". I'm not sure at this point which is the older strategy or which one represents a greater degree of nativisation, but my intuition says the former and that the latter is the more modern phenomenon as speakers gained a greater degree of English proficiency.

I wonder whether the timing of the development of affrication of the slender coronal stops in Scottish Gaelic is relevant here. I think that is a fairly recent development, in most varieties anyway.

If you take something like Munster Irish (where the slender stop is an unaffricated alveolar and the broad one is dental) then it seems very natural that English /t/ and /d/ would be seen as corresponding to the slender stops and /θ/ and /ð/ to the broad ones (and of course the latter are often pronounced as dental stops in Hiberno-English).