Re: Tamil

For some reason or the other Piotr's message didn't appear in its
entirety: I got to see the whole of it only when I clicked on "Reply".
I'm posting the whole thing here.

I'll try to get you an mp3 of the thing: see I told you it was no
piece of cake ;0)

Rohit

--- In phoNet@egroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@i...> wrote:

Hi again, Rohit,

I retract my earlier guess concerning "lateral flaps". It seems to me
the sound we're looking for is a kind of "apicopalatal central
approximant", cf.


http://sound.media.mit.edu/~dpwe/AUDITORY/asamtgs/asa95wsh/5pSC/5pSC11.html

In plain(er) English, it seems to be a sound not unlike an American
/r/ (possibly the "bunched" variant, as the phoneticians I'm referring
to say that the closure requires no dynamic tongue movement
characterising Dravidian retroflexes), but probably with a good deal
of lateral opening that modifies its acoustic shape. It could also be
described as a semivocalic (open) counterpart of the retroflex lateral
/L/, with which (correct me if I'm wrong) it is said to merge in some
varieties of modern Tamil. I've never heard it produced by a native
speaker. Perhaps you could record a sound file for the benefit of
phoNet mambers?

Piotr