Phonetic and Phonological Investigation of the Fifth Liquid in Malayalam: Evidence for Rhotic Characteristics
نویسندگان
چکیده
As part of its liquid inventory, Malayalam has two rhotics, two laterals and a fifth liquid which has been called an ‘r-sound’ by some researchers and a lateral by others. This paper presents findings on the phonetic and phonological nature of the fifth liquid in Malayalam, which has never been the subject of experimental research before. Results show that this sound has the phonetic characteristics of a clear post-alveolar central approximant, therefore suggesting that Malayalam has a third rhotic. Interestingly, however, its phonological behaviour displays patterns that are typical of other retroflex rather than of alveolar sounds in the language. An extrinsic phonetic interpretation of phonology is suggested to account for the results.
منابع مشابه
The Contested Fifth Liquid in Malayalam: A Window into the Lateral-Rhotic Relationship in Dravidian Languages
Apart from Tamil, Malayalam is the only Dravidian language that still retains a fifth liquid in its inventory (denoted as /ʐ/), a sound that can be traced back to Proto-Dravidian. The phonetic and phonological status of this sound has been the subject of considerable debate, both in terms of its rhotic versus lateral status and its phonetic realisation. Studies to date have been impressionistic...
متن کاملPhonetic and Phonological Aspects of Liquid Devoicing in Thai, Hungarian, and American English Stop-Liquid Sequences∗
It is a well-known coarticulatory phenomenon that liquids preceded by voiceless stops tend to devoice partially, e.g. English clash /khlæS/→ [khl ̊ æS]. The purpose of this paper was to investigate acoustically whether devoicing of the liquid following a voiceless stop in the three languages Thai, Hungarian, and American English originates at the planning level, e.g. is phonological, or whether ...
متن کاملRhotic variation and schwa epenthesis in windsor French
This study investigates two idiosyncratic phenomena found in the French dialect of the Windsor area in SW Ontario. (1) Rhotics in this dialect are pronounced in three phonetic varieties: the dorsal fricative, the alveolar approximant, and the alveolar tap. (2) An epenthetic schwa is also found in the phonetic realization in certain phonemic contexts. Through phonetic analysis of recorded speech...
متن کاملPhonetic Implementation of Geminates in Malayalam Nouns
Malayalam employs gemination in syntactic and lexically distinctive roles. This paper presents an impressionistic and acoustic investigation of a subset of geminate consonants in Malayalam nouns. We show (a) that geminate sonorant consonants exhibit spectral differences as well as temporal ones and (b) that there are systematic spectral and temporal differences in vowels and consonants in nouns...
متن کاملSpanish complex onsets and the phonetics–phonology interface*
This study analyzes cross-dialectal phonetic variation in Spanish complex onsets in light of recent work on the phonetics–phonology interface. Two basic patterns of obstruent-rhotic cluster realization, vowel intrusion and coarticulation-induced rhotic assibilation, receive a phonetically-motivated explanation in terms of the temporal coordination of consonantal gestures, within the framework o...
متن کامل