Retroflex sounds

Jacob Baltuch jacob.baltuch at EURONET.BE
Tue Jun 23 20:33:32 UTC 1998


>>Hock also seems inconsistent when he insists upon the relevance of
>>retroflexion in Norwegian and Sicilian, etc.[where retroflexion seems
>>allophonic rather than structural, as Jacob Baltuch has observed ],
>
>At the risk of repeating myself (I am not sure if I have commented upon this
>before): retroflexion in spoken East Norwegian is not allophonic.

Yes, you have commented upon this before, more than a month or two
ago if I recall correctly, and I don't think I ever mentioned
Norwegian. (Or, strictly speaking, Sicilian) Re: the Romance
dialects I did mention ("southern Italian" -- I had in mind basically
those Sandra van der Geer mentioned, i.e. if I remember correctly
Calabrese and/or Pugliese -- Sardinian, Asturian) I was asking more
than stating. Please refer to posting by Sandra van der Geer and Miguel
Carrasquer Vidal for the answers.

Most importantly I think the main distinction I had in mind (see my post)
was not so much the allophonic/phonemic one but "isolated feature"/"systemic
feature". I believe Peter J. Claus also made such an observation earlier on
(in a post on 6/20). Since in that post Peter expressly referred to an
observation made earlier by George Thompson it looks like George is
sufficiently aware of the distinction between the two and what's above
must be, if not a typo, maybe somewhat carelessly expressed.

Finally, Bh. Krishnamurti uses this (other) distinction too in the post
where he outlines a scenario of the appearance of retroflexion in IA (6/21)





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