REtroflex sounds

[T.I. Console]

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Jacob Baltuch wrote:

>The southern Italian and Sardinian retroflexes seem to be
>allophones of /l/ since the posters were saying they only occur as
>geminates.

Well, this is almost true indeed. In Sardinian, the spelling dd for the
geminate .d.d indeed occurs instead of the Latin double ll. For
example, `sa bidda' instead of `ipsa villa' (caseless Latin) for
`the village'. Lone-words from Italian after contact with Genova and
Pisa preserve the Italian spelling and pronunciation, for example,
`bellu' for `bello' (good, good-looking).
But there is also a retroflex voiced d, which is non-geminate, namely after
an n. This retroflex is written either dh, or simply d. Example: `su mundhu'
or `su mundu' for `ipsu mundu' (caseless Latin).

>In any case the examples adduced so
>far also seem to contrast with the Indian example in that they are
>not a system involving a whole series of phonemes of the language.
>I would imagine such isolated features would, for the sake of economy,
>tend to get simplified out of the system (even if it is the case that
>they are phonemic).

There you have a point. Indeed, the Sardinian retroflex system
does not include any other sound than the retroflex d, and, if
you like, also a retroflex n, but only in combination with the retroflex
d (this is of course a samdhi phenomenon).

Sandra van der Geer
Leiden
The Netherlands
info at ticonsole.nl