English retroflexion

[George Thompson]

In defense of Jonathan Silk:

Isn't it true, though, that native speakers tend not to notice such
phonetic features of their own language, insofar as they operate with a
phonemic system that does not recognize the feature as phonemic? Whereas
non-native speakers [as we all are when it comes to Sanskrit, for example]
are very acutely aware of such things, insofar as they are
language-learners [second language acquisition is a more conscious process
than first language acquisition].

There is also he influence of the writing system, which in the case of
English, of course, does not recognize retroflex phonemes [or phones, for
that matter].

Also, recalling the examples of retroflexion from East Norwegian and
West Swedish which Lars Martin Fosse cited on the list a few months ago, I
wonder how cogent this "minimal pair" is, since it is derived from two
different languages [or dialects]. Can such minimal pairs
[retroflex-dental, or retroflex-alveolar, etc.] be cited *within* the same
dialect? In other words, it is still not clear to me that there are many
languages outside of the Indic linguistic area in which retroflexion is
*phonemic*.

Any help from the list's comparative linguists?

Best wishes,

George Thompson
>>
>
>Incidentally, about everytime someone mentions
>U.S. English as an example for some linguistic
>feature (I noticed that on other lists too)
>some "native speaker of American English" interjects
>that "as a native speaker of American English" he
>is not aware of the feature in question in his
>speech. It seems there is a huge conspiracy to
>misrepresent U.S. English in linguistic textbooks
>so maybe people should stop quoting U.S. examples :-)
>
>I wonder if it's not some kind of paranoia. After all
>it should seem odd that someone could be accurately
>informed on Pugliese, Calabrese, Sardo, Asturian, Swedish,
>Russian, Polish and Mandarin Chinese but get it completely
>wrong when it comes to U.S. English (not exactly an obscure
>exotic language). If someone quoted French as an example
>for a linguistic feature that I didn't immediately
>recognize, I think my first reaction would not be that he is
>necessarily ignorant. I would probably wonder first
>if the feature in question might not be present in a dialect
>with which I wasn't familiar or even if I understood correctly
>what he was talking about.