rhoticizm

[Rosa Graciela Montes]

On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Simackova Sarka wrote:

> I am looking for crosslinguistic information about
> acquisition of apical trill. I have the following questions:
>
> 1. Czech speech therapists say that children who substitute a
> non-rhotic sound for /r/ are more likely to get rid of the
> substitution. On the other hand, children who substitute a back rhotic
> often keep this pronunciation till adulthood. Could anyone confirm
> this for another language (other languages)?

I have noticed the pronunciation you describe [uvular r]
among adult speakers of Spanish in the Puebla region of
Mexico. I only have anecdotal observations but it seems to
be fairly frequent in certain localities (e.g. Atlixco).

The trilled sound seems to be one of the last sounds to be
acquired by Spanish speaking children [3 to 4 years] and
they have a lot of intermediate substitutions along the
way: [r], [y], [l], [d], so that "perrito" might become
[perito], [pelito], [peyito], [pedito].

The children I've looked at had all four at some point, but
didn't have the uvular.

This summer I observed a strategy used by my little niece
(3). Her spontaneous replacement for trilled r's was
[r]. But when she self-corrected or monitored her speech she
would insert a consonant before the 'r': pedrito for
"perrito".

As a summary, with respect to Spanish: The early
pronunciations for 'r' don't survive into adulthood. I don't
know, however, how uvular 'r' started out, for those
speakers that maintain it in adult speech.

-Rosa Graciela Montes (UAP, Mexico)