matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) (10/16/85)
Edward Delavan Perry writes, in "A Sanskrit Primer": "A double R is nowhere admitted: if such would occur, either by retention of an original R or by conversion of S to R, the first R is omitted, and the preceding vowel, if short, is made long by compensation . . ." (p. 34) J. Weingreen writes, in "A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew": "When Daghes Forte appears in a letter it shows that, for some reason, that letter is doubled . . . The gutturals, being throat-letters, cannot be doubled in pronunciation, nor can R, so that Daghes Forte cannot apply to these five letters. (p. 15) . . . "NOTE: When the letter to be doubled is a guttural or R then, since these cannot be doubled (i.e., receive Daghes Forte), the preceding vowel is lengthened." (p. 17) Is there some sort of universal linguistic principle at work here? How come these two completely different languages both ban a double R, and handle such a situation in the same way, viz., lengthening the preceding vowel? And if there is such a principle, how come it doesn't apply to Spanish, with its "perros" and "arroyos"? Is it because the R in Spanish is not a "throat-letter," as in Hebrew? And if so, does that mean that the Sanskrit R was a "throat-letter"? (I am leaving out languages like English and French, which write a double R but pronounce it as a single R) -- Matt Rosenblatt
dawn@prism.UUCP (10/18/85)
If I remember my high school Spansih at all, one "rolls" a
double r (sort of allowing your tongue to flutter a bit while
uttering the sound) -- effectively pronouncing it twice. Perhaps
that is why it is "allowed"??
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dawn Stockbridge Hall {cca, datacube, ihnp4, inmet, mit-eddie, wjh12}...
Mirror Systems, Inc. ...mirror!prism!dawn
"Knowing is not enough: We must apply. Willing is not enough: We must do.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (10/25/85)
In article <9500005@prism.UUCP> dawn@prism.UUCP writes: > If I remember my high school Spanish at all, one "rolls" a > double r (sort of allowing your tongue to flutter a bit while > uttering the sound) -- effectively pronouncing it twice. Perhaps > that is why it is "allowed"?? Glad someone opened this topic for me to slide a question in... I have never been able to do this (rolling the "r" sound), either while speaking Spanish (had two years of it, but most is now forgotten) or while trying to fake a Scots accent. Is doing this sort of thing (and similar vibratory sounds, like the Arab ululation done with a flapping tongue) something you have to learn as a small child, and is impossible (or at least very difficult) to teach oneself at a later age? I'd like to be able to do this sort of thing, but have resigned myself to accepting that I never will be able to... Will Martin UUCP/USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA
michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael b maxwell) (10/28/85)
In article <2404@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-bmd.UUCP writes: >> If I remember my high school Spanish at all, one "rolls" a >> double r (sort of allowing your tongue to flutter a bit while >> uttering the sound) -- effectively pronouncing it twice. >I have never been able to do this (rolling the "r" sound). Is doing this >sort of thing (and similar vibratory sounds, like the Arab ululation done >with a flapping tongue) something you have to learn as a small child, and >is impossible (or at least very difficult) to teach oneself at a later age? No, in articulatory phonetics classes I've seen taught (by the Summer Institute of Linguistics), almost everyone learns to do the Spanish (etc.) rr, as well as a host of other sounds at least as difficult. The only sounds they (SIL) give people slack on are the Parisian r (which is done by fluttering the uvula at the back of your mouth), and pharyngeal fricatives (I won't even try to describe them, save to say that they are made in the throat just above your Adam's apple). You might try using a bigger flow of air--I can only make an rr if I'm speaking fairly strongly (i.e. it's extremely hard to whisper an rr). Don't try just making lots of single r's in a row, it's quite different. -- Mike Maxwell Boeing Artificial Intelligence Center ...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm
ray@othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn) (11/02/85)
As a Scot, may I be permitted to explain how to "roll your R's" (:-)).
When you make a 'AAR' sound, the periphery of a fairly large part of the tip
of your tongue should come in contact with the roof of your mouth, the
furthest forward part about 1/4" behind the teeth. As the vibrational part
of the sound starts, hold your tongue there, and increase the air flow
significantly as if in a pant.
Of course as a native "R's roller" it is quite difficult for me to see any
difficulty in this, and I hope no-one has been observing me through my
office door as I try to work out the mechanics!
The next lesson (unless bribed to the contrary), will be under the title:
"Clearing your throat, or how NOT to pronounce the word Loch"
The last in the series, currently being planned, is:
"Rolling your R's in Auchtermuchty, a sailors' guide
to sporrans of the Scottish Highlands"
Ray Dunn. ...philabs!micomvax!othervax!rayesa@kvvax4.UUCP (Esa K Viitala) (11/04/85)
In article <> ray@othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn) writes: > >As a Scot, may I be permitted to explain how to "roll your R's" (:-)). In which case I think I am entitled to give the following explanation: The "four-letter-words" are in Finnish often called 'a"rr"a"pa"a"t', (aerraepaeaet), Engl. 'heads of R's`. Really to roll your 'R` you have to 1. hit your thumb with a hammer 2. instead of screaming fu*k or d*mn you shout PERKELE with a loooong and rolling 'R`. The message of this is that, one should not try to pronounce 'r` as in 'aaargh', which tempts to make you pull your tongue too far back in your mouth. Instead if you precede the 'r' with a vocal 'a' as in 'that' (ae or a"), it might help you to find the right place to roll your 'r's. > >Of course as a native "R's roller" it is quite difficult for me to see any >difficulty in this, and I hope no-one has been observing me through my >office door as I try to work out the mechanics! Even after living outside Finland for several years, I am still able to give a nice rolling sound in my Finnish equivalents of the English four-letter-words. :-) :-). Being a native "R's roller", too, I do not need a hammer, though. :-). -- ---ekv, {seismo,okstate,garfield,decvax,philabs}!mcvax!kvvax4!esa
irena@reed.UUCP (Irena Sifrar) (11/06/85)
As a native speaker of 'R', I would like to add the following: Our children learn to roll the 'R' when they are already 2 or 3 years old, whereas they learn to pronounce all other sounds much earlier. They say 'L' or even 'Y' instead of 'R', and everybody around those kids gives them sentences with lots of 'R's to repeat... It is almost funny that we still enforce this 'difficult' sound. Irena
reilly@iuvax.UUCP (11/16/85)
It is a fact that /r/ and /l/ vary widely when comparing one language to another. For example, an /l/ might phonetically be a fricative in one language, and, as in English, be a glide. This is not the case for a sounds like /s/, of which we can say with confidence that it has certain phonetic properties (energy concentrated above 4000 Hz) and certain phonological ones (is syllabic if any fricatives within a langauge are syllabic). Thus I would be skeptical of any such universal concerning an /r/ or /l/, simply because the category of manner varies widely.
michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael b maxwell) (11/19/85)
In article <7100021@iuvax.UUCP> reilly@iuvax.UUCP writes: >...sounds like /s/, of which we can >say with confidence that it has certain phonetic properties >(energy concentrated above 4000 Hz) and certain phonological >ones (is syllabic if any fricatives within a langauge are syllabic). ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I'm glad someone brought this up. Hooper (in her book "Natural Generative Phonology") also claimed that [s] was syllabic in English but not in Spanish. As far as I could tell the reason was so she could save the syllable structure theory she had, which said that there was a strict succession from non-syllabic sounds at the periphery of a syllable to syllabic sounds in the core. English words like "spy" were a problem for her theory unless such a word was syllabified (sp?) [s-pit]. Spanish, on the other hand, has no such words (a word which "would" begin with s + C has an "e" tacked on the beginning), hence there is no reason to claim that [s] is syllabic in Spanish. Being a native speaker of English, and having fairly good pronunciation in Spanish, I never saw this; [s] seems nearly identical in the two languages (possibly a bit more dental in Spanish, and tending to be pronounced a bit more lenis). It certainly doesn't *feel* more syllabic in English, for whatever that's worth. So what is the evidence for "s" being syllabic in English, other than that it makes someone's theory of syllables work better? -- Mike Maxwell Boeing Artificial Intelligence Center ...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm
reilly@iuvax.UUCP (11/28/85)
Perhaps it is an ad hoc move to claim that /s/ is syllabic in English. But that still does not explain what the /s/ is doing there in the first place. What I mean is that if one accepts the Sonority Hierarchy as defining the canonical syllable as an increase up to the vocalic nucleus and a decrease in sonority (by sonority hierarchy, i mean stop < low fricative < high fricative (eg /s/) < nasal < liquid < glide (r,y,w) < vowel constitutes a hierachy of sonority--except for nasals, this corresponds basically to how open your mouth is!), then you have to face the question: what is the s doing there in words like sky, scrunch, etc. Also homorganic nasal clusters common in Bantu, like ntaa in KiRundi. I am not speaking lightly of the sonority hierarchy. I have performed a statistical analysis of a syllabified computer readable dictionary of English and found that onsets are much more constrained phonetically/ phonologically than codas. The s IS a stable, easy to maintain sound. It also packs a lot of audibility. It forms a good phonetic contrast with the following stop. Basically something one typically finds at the beginning of a syllable is a big difference of sonority, eg stop followed by a vowel, hardly EVER a stop followed by a fricative. I could go on and on. Anyway, I agree with you that Hopper is making an ad hoc move. But so what. The /s/ still needs some explanation. Furthermore, the notion of "syllabicity" is murky insofar as it is solely based speaker's intuitions, at least as Alan Bell defines it. Therefore I wouldn't buy your Spanish intuitions, and second I wouldn't care a whole lot about intuitions in the first place, since they are non-quantifiable and wouldn't help tell me what the /s/ is doing there. Such intuitions are probably based on the timing of the acoustic events. Selkirk has recently written a very interesting paper on the sonority hierarchy in a fetschrift (however you spell it) for Morris Halle. Selkirk says you can dispense with the major features (consonantal, vocalic, syllabic) by using sonority, and I think she is right. I myself have done something much differnt with it: explained some assymmetries in J. Greenberg's universals concerning initial and final clusters (presented at LSA Winter Meeting '84). Sorry if I'm rattling on and on. I was very excited to see that someone had responded to my note, and that person knows some lingustics.
michaelm@bcsaic.UUCP (michael b maxwell) (12/03/85)
In article <7100022@iuvax.UUCP> reilly@iuvax.UUCP writes: >...What I mean is that if one accepts the >Sonority Hierarchy as defining the canonical syllable as an increase >up to the vocalic nucleus and a decrease in sonority (by sonority >hierarchy, i mean stop < low fricative < high fricative (eg /s/) < >nasal < liquid < glide (r,y,w) < vowel constitutes a hierachy of >sonority--except for nasals, this corresponds basically to how open >your mouth is!), then you have to face the question: what is the >s doing there in words like sky, scrunch, etc. I guess that's my point; why should you accept the Sonority Hierarchy *and* the definition of the canonical syllable? What independent evidence is there that the Sonority Hierarchy is important to the syllable structure? Or that syllables are *necessarily* canonical? >Also homorganic >nasal clusters common in Bantu, like ntaa in KiRundi. I vaguely remember an article in Linguistic Enquirer (sic) in 1979 on this subject. If I recall right, the conclusion was that some nasal clusters are clusters, while others are single consonants--i.e. that they behaved phonologically as C, not CC (not even C$C). In time-honored tradition of the usnet, I don't have the reference with me... >...onsets [in English] are much more constrained phonetically/ >phonologically than codas. Doesn't Hooper's hierarchy predict that both should be equally constrained? Maybe you talk about this in your LSA paper. If so, can you summarize? >...Anyway, I agree with you that Hopper is making >an ad hoc move. But so what. The /s/ still needs some explanation. Does it? Her assumption is that phonology is necessarily "natural," and from that standpoint, it does need an explanation. But maybe phonology is not necessarily natural, as Anderson has argued... >Selkirk has recently written a very interesting paper on the sonority >hierarchy in a fetschrift (however you spell it) for Morris Halle. Yet another festschrift for Halle? Or is this the 1972(?) one? > Sorry if I'm rattling on and on. I was very excited to see that >someone had responded to my note, and that person knows some lingustics. Rattle on! Maybe some more linguists will respond! By the way, do you do any syntax? -- Mike Maxwell Boeing Artificial Intelligence Center ...uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!michaelm