Re: American Dutch dialects

On 2009-03-01 19:53, Andrew Jarrette wrote:

> Incidentally Torsten I just spoke on the phone with my sister, who has
> been to Cornwall and Devon in England where she heard the people there
> speaking with r's much the same as in Canada or the U.S., i.e. in
> syllable-final position. She couldn't be sure whether they were
> retroflex because she does not have training in phonetics, but when I
> described retroflex pronunciation she thought that was probably what
> she heard. Also the character on "Coronation Street" who uses these
> strong retroflex r's is Fred Elliott, in case you might get and/or
> watch the program in Denmark.

SW England is where the American-type /r/ most likely comes from, and
it's also the largest surviving stronghold of rhoticity in England. The
West Country pronunciation of /r/ is usually regarded as retroflex, but
as I point out in my article, variation between the true retroflex
(technically, subapico-postalveolar) articulation and the "bunched"
(mediodorso-mediopalatal) one is probably their natural mode of existence.

Interestingly, residual rhoticity is still found in the West Midlands,
but the prevailing realisation of syllable-coda /r/ there seems to be
apico-alveolar rather than retroflex/bunched:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/linguistics/WPL/WP2007/5.pdf

Piotr