rhotacism from Ray Hickey

[Prof E F Kotze']

Dear Collegues,
I perhaps should have made it clearer when I posted Ray Hickey's remarks
yesterday that the text was entirely Ray's.
 
Dorothy Disterheft
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Dear Dorothy
 
An interesting synchronic phenomenon in Afrikaans, which seems to be
spreading rapidly, is the changing of syllable-final /s/ from
apical/alveolar to retroflex when preceded by /r/, to such an extent
that /r/ and /s/ coalesce into something which is phonologically
similar to the Czech r hacek (but voiceless).  Examples in Afrikaans
are kinders ('children') (with accent on the first syllable),
verseker ('ensure') (accent on the second) and nors ('grumpy').
 
Your comments below (or are they Ray's?) led me to draw this comparison:
 
>A fricative /r/ (apical trill or continuant) can easily become
> a full sibilant, i.e. re-align itself phonologically as /z/, as has
> happened in Polish with the Slavic PRE-prefix and as seen in Czech in the
> trilled /r/ (evident e.g. in _Dvorak_, the composer's name and indicated
> by a superscript hacek). It also happens sub-phonemically in Stockholm
> Swedish and forms of Western Irish when /r/ is phonetically palatalised and
> where the raising of the apex to the palate leads to assibiliation.
 
Another case of the promotion of secondary articulation?  Seemingly.
 
Ernst Kotze'
 
 
==================================
Prof. Ernst F. Kotze
Dept. Afrikaans & Nederlands, UPE
Posbus 1600
ZA-6000 Port Elizabeth
Afrique du Sud
 
Tel. +27 41 5042226 (W), 533230 (H), 5042574 (F)