----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2000 12:35
PM
Subject: [phoNet] Explain English
R.
As has been determined on the basis of X-raying
and cineradiography, there are two rather different articulations that
produce virtually the same acoustic pattern perceived as "American R". Both
are postalveolar approximants, but the active articulator (the tongue) behaves
differently and takes a different shape in each case.
The retroflexed variant
is made with the tongue tip raised towards the postalveolar area; the
middle part of the tongue is lowered and almost flat. In the "bunched" version the body of the tongue assumes
the shape of a ball; the tip is lowered and "tucked away" underneath, while the
arched middle part rises towards the postalveolar/prevelar area of the roof of
the mouth. In either case there is also some
pharyngeal constriction (more for the buched variety) as the root of the
tongue approximates the wall of the pharynx.
I'm not sure if these terms are easier, but I hope
they are more precise than the forwarded description.
Many Americans use one of these varieties either
predominantly or to the complete exclusion of the other, but it has been
reported that some speakers can shift from the one to the other even within a
single phonetic realisation of /r/. Reportedly, the variants are so similar
acoustically that native speakers of American English cannot distinguish them by
ear.
Piotr
--start forward--
I have difficulty understanding?@an English pronunciation [r].
The book says,
The r of English in the United States is made either by curling the
tongue tip back into the mouth or by bunching the tongue upward and back in
the mouth.
I can understand the first half but not the second description.
Would
you explain to me with easier terms so that I can understand it.
--end forward--