26.5117, Qs: Vocalic R in German

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LINGUIST List: Vol-26-5117. Mon Nov 16 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.5117, Qs: Vocalic R in German

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Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 12:22:18
From: Geoffrey Sampson [sampson at cantab.net]
Subject: Vocalic R in German

 
Can anyone say whether, in mainstream dialects of German and in ordinary fluent speech rather than artificial isolation-forms, there is a difference between the vocalic R and the shwa? That is, do a pair of words such as ''bitte'' and ''bitter'' have a real phonetic difference? Most phonetic textbooks seem to claim that the -er syllable ends in a consonantal sound such as a uvular approximant. There is a very nice website about German pronunciation by Paul Joyce at joycep.myweb.port.ac.uk/pronounce/consonr3.html, and he describes the -er ending as purely vocalic, but as a ''slightly lower and further back'' vowel than the shwa of e.g. ''Katze''. I don't think Joyce offers IPA symbols, but somewhere I have seen someone use the ordinary turned-e for the shwa and the turned-a for the -er sound: in other words, two vowels both in the mid-central area of the vowel quadrilateral. I have two puzzles with this: (i), it seems in principle strange for a language to make a phonemic difference b
 etween two shwa-like vowels with so little separating them; and (ii), I have never managed to hear this difference in real life, though I think I am pretty sensitive to small phonetic differences. (I learned my German mostly in Hanover, whose dialect seems to be regarded as the most ''standard'' version of the language.) Is this a case where people's perceptions of the phonology are being shaped by expectations derived from spelling and from the fact that -e and -er contrast grammatically -- and where ''people'' include not just average native speakers but even professional linguists?

Geoff Sampson
 

Linguistic Field(s): Phonology

Subject Language(s): German (deu)



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