From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 36551
Date: 2005-03-02
>On 05-03-01 20:26, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:Even the peculiar affrication of initial tr- is not unique
>
> >> [Andrew Jarrette:]
>>> Thanks for your illumination on this topic. You seem to know
>>> everything about everything. What a coincidence that you are right
>>> now working on an article on the pronunciation of /r/ in Old
>>> English. I would love to read it. The conclusion I draw from what
>>> you have said is that /r/ was probably always variable in its
>>> pronunciation, and one cannot say what the archetypal pronunciation
>>> was. But I will definitely read that article by J. Catford in
>>> which he debunks the "myth" of the original trill. But I still
>>> wonder why English is the only modern Indo-European language with
>>> an approximant, non-vibrational /r/ (as far as I know, that is)
>>
>>
>> Also Armenian, I think.
>
>Actually, there are accents of English with trilled or tapped
>realisations of /r/ at least in some positions, so English as a
>dialectal complex isn't entirely without them. On the other hand, there
>are other IE languages with approximant/fricative rhotics (standard
>French is one!), or with a contrast between two rhotic phonemes, e.g.
>tap or approximant vs. a trill (Albanian, Spanish, Armenian). Widely
>different realisations of /r/ can be found in dialects of German,
>Danish, Portuguese, etc., etc., etc. (not to mention idiolectal
>deviations from the norm, which are especially frequent in the case of
>rhotics and are a never-drying source of potential innovations -- see
>the recent spread of labiodental /r/ in England). English is not as
>special as it might seem.