Andrew Jarrette:
> What is the consensus view on the original
> pronunciation of the Indo-European phoneme /r/?
To put it in a nutshell, uvular "r" (as in French
or Proto-SinoTibetan) or retroflex "r" (as in
English and Mandarin) are much less common in
languages than the apical (tip-of-the-tongue)
variety. So that narrows down the possibilities.
Also, if IE *r had been generally a uvular, let's
say, it would show tell tale signs like a
predominance of becoming "h" far too often.
Instead "r" has been preserved too damn well to
consider *r a fricative.
As for retroflex, I recall a statistic that 1% of
world languages have retroflex "r". I don't know
how valid that statistic is but I just can't think
of many languages with this sound aside from English,
Mandarin and some varieties of French (but only
because of influence from English). There is a good
tendency for retroflex "r", being an approximate,
to end up as a vowel or disappear completely, as has
already happened in many British dialects of English.
In others, conceivably "r" might also eventually
become "u" (because "r" is normally [+round] by
default afterall).
Again, IE has preserved *r stellarly and doesn't
show strong signs like the above.
> But then where did the prevailing untrilled
> English /r/ come from (the /r/ of almost all
> English dialects and accents with the chief
> exception of Scottish)?
I had read that Shakespearean English had a mixture
of retroflex and tapped "r"s depending on the position
of it in a word. So final -r in "teacher" would have
retroflex "r" but intervocalic -r- in "every" would
be tapped or trilled.
> But surely one pronunciation must have dominated?
Methinks consonantal *r in IE was most commonly a
tapped "r". As a syllabic resonant, I'm voting for a
retroflex approximant for kicks, otherwise I just
don't know how you can get a "resonant" out of it.
Anybody else?
> However, countering this is the observation that
> the initial sequence /wr/ which existed suggests
> that /r/ was trilled, since an untrilled /r/ would
> make the preceding /w/ practically inaudible [...]
Don't ever forget about allophony. Allophones are
your friend :) We can discuss how IE *r was
_generally_ pronounced but this doesn't mean that it
held true for all instances of that phoneme. Keep
that in mind. So, perhaps *r was retroflex, trilled
AND a tap all at the same time. Doesn't that idea
just blow your mind :)
= gLeN
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