Sorry
for the spam: just the excitement of discovery--at least I didn't run out naked
from my bath ;)
Time to re-open this long
(semi-)closed topic :)
But first, lemme jog your
memory. While learning Tamil a coupla years ago, I
encountered this delightfully weirdissimo phoneme which defied qualification and asked for
this groupfolk's help to find a proper
phonetic description for it. As the
mail below shows, Piotr suggested this could
be a "semivocalic (open) counterpart
of the retroflex lateral /L/".
I'm now trying to help a Wikipedian (who's authoring an article on Tamil pronunciation)
qualify this sound from a linguist's point of view. He seems to have
understandably fallen into the trap of mistaking it for the retroflex
approximant (same as I did to begin with).
I now need to give him an IPA symbol to qualify this phoneme.
Piotr, can you
suggest one? Is there some kind of a
"semivocalic" marker in IPA to use with the regular lateral retroflex
approximant /ɭ/? How about using the retroflex approximant /ɻ/
with a laminal marker like so: /ɻ̻/?
Thanks
in advance for your responses,
Rohit
PS: You
might need the Arial Unicode MS font installed to view the IPA symbols I've
used: nothing missed as I've given the IPA descriptions for each
anyway.
>
> --- In
href="mailto:phoNet@egroups.com">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
Rohit
Dasari
Software
Design Engineer
Windows
Serviceability
Microsoft
India Development Center
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