--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Lisa" <eris@...> wrote:
> Sorry to come back to this, but so I'm clear:
>
> - In ON the -r was your garden-variety, alveolar trill, correct?
In my opinion (which I will justify in an article I'm writing right
now), the pronunciation of Northwest Germanic /r/ has always been as
variable as it is in Modern English or in the modern Scandinavian
languages -- a trill here, a tap there, and an approximant or
fricative perhaps in most places. The notion of the apical trill as
the "standard" variety of /r/ in all old languages and of other
variants as modern corruptions is a myth.
> - Was it syllabic, or some vowel + alveolar trill?
In the beginning (I mean, after the period of unstressed vowel
dropping) it was asyllabic, just like the final /-r/ in my first name
(asyllabic in Polish). Syllabicity and vowel epenthesis (as in Modern
Icelandic: -r > -ur) was a later development.
Piotr