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In article <1156864594.705023.290430@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Michael" <mjbaldwin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It made me think: if you take the sound "er" (as in "Er, I don't know")
> you can put an "r" in front of it to make "rer". There is clearly an
> extra sound here at the front, but the result isn't just an elongated
> "rrr", to me there are two distinct sounds, but I don't know what the
> first one would be called. It seems like a labialized r, followed by a
> non-labialized one. Can anyone help me understand this? Is there a
> separate IPA symbol for this preceding r? I can't seem to find much
> mention of it anywhere.
In my idiolect, /r/ in an onset is realized with rounding (IPA
superscript w), while /r/ in a nucleus or coda is unrounded (or at
least less rounded). So it sounds like something similar may be going
on with you.
Nuclear /r/ is of course syllabic, so it would have the syllabicity
mark (vertical stroke under the symbol) in a narrow transcription.
This could possibly be alternatively transcribed with a lowering mark
("T" under the symbol) and a lengthening mark (pointed colon), but I
don't think I've ever seen anyone do it that way.
BTW, I have the "curled r", so my /r/ is actually a somewhat retroflex
approximant. But this applies to all instances of my /r/, so the base
symbol wouldn't change from one prosodic position to another. I
assume that whether you have bunched (alveolar) or curled (retroflex)
r, it's basic tongue articulation is the same anywhere in the
syllable. If not, then that's another difference you could transcribe.
There may also be something going on with the tongue root (a
pharyngeal constriction is typical of English /r/), but I have trouble
telling what's going on down there and can't tell if anything changes
for /r/ in different positions.
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from www.teranews.com">http://www.teranews.com
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