rhotacism from Ray Hickey

[Jim Rader]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Another unexotic example of assibilation of a rhotic sound can be
found in several varieties of New World Spanish, where orthographic
<rr>, the lengthened trill, becomes a voiced palato-alveolar
fricative in certain positions.  I recall being struck by this in the
speech of an instructor from Co/rdoba, in the interior of Argentina,
at a time when I knew nothing about the phonetics of Spanish.
 
In the dialects of Irish I have heard, palatalized /r/ retains a
rhotic quality, though there is a tendency to devoice and assibilate
either "broad" (i.e., non-palatalized) or "slender" (palatalized) /r/
before a voiceless stop (in words like <neart> 'strength,' <cearc>
'hen').  In Scottish Gaelic dialects, however, slender /r/ has some
very diverse realizations; at least some speakers from Lewis in the
Outer Hebrides have a voiced interdental fricative (at least that's
what it sounds like to me).
 
Jim Rader
 
>
> The present discussion of rhotacism and its possible reverse has been
> centered on Altaic and the Germanic/Latin data so that perhaps the data has
> prevented us from making some general points. Taking Lyle's suggestion that
> the reversal of rhotacism is very unlikely as a starting point: the issue
> to home in on in such changes is the SECONDARY ARTICULATION of the segments
> involved. 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.
>
>....................
> Ray Hickey
> English Linguistics
> Essen University
> Germany
>
> r.hickey at uni-essen.de
>