Liquids flowing, melting, dissolving

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Liquids flowing, melting, dissolving

• Oliver Niebuhr
• Lehrprobe im Rahmen der Phonetik I
• am Fachbereich Sprachwissenschaft
• der Universität Konstanz, den 22.04.2009
• www.ipds.uni-kiel.de/on/downloads/Teach_Liquids_Ko
  nstanz.ppt

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1. What is a liquid ?

• Liquid is a primarily phonological, collective
  term for a group of speech sounds that belong to
  the class of consonants
• ? as against vowels
• consonants do not constitute syllable nuclei
• and they involve some constriction between active
  and passive articulator, e.g., between tongue and
  (a) the soft/hard palate, (b) the alveolar ridge,
  ()
• ? different from consonants like /p/, /t/, /k/,
  /f/, /s/, () liquids are not obstruent, but
  sonorant consonants
• ? the constriction is open enough to permit a
  voiced air stream to pass through without
  causing friction
• Finally, this laminar (? turbulent) air stream of
  liquids goes through the oral, not the nasal
  cavity. That is, it comes out of the mouth.
• A liquid is frequently defined as a non-nasal,
  sonorant consonant
• ? Halle (1992), Walsh Dickey (1997), Ladefoged
  and Madiesson (1996), ()

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1. What is a liquid ?
Ramers (2001), following the SPE (Chomsky Halle
1968)

• ? for example ltlgt in
• leaf, meal
• Liebe, viel
• ? for example ltrgt in
• read, cure
• Ring, Kur
• What about ltygt, ltwhgt, as in
• yes, what, () ?
• Consonants ?
• Sonorant ?
• Non-nasal ?
• In fact, these sounds are sometimes subsumed
  under liquids (cf. Maddieson 1984). But unlike
  ltlgt and ltrgt, they are characterized by a
  continuous change in sound quality ? glides
• So, liquids non-nasal, sonorant, sustained
  consonants

ltlgt and ltrgt ( rhotics)
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1. What is a liquid ?
Ramers (2001), following the SPE (Chomsky Halle
1968)

• Often supported by phonotactic
• argument ? Liquids can fill final
• position in syllable-initial consonant
• clusters.
• English pray, play, but no
• pwhay, pnay.
• German Sprinter, Splitter,
• but no Spnitter, Spjitter
• But why the term liquid ?
• ? because they are vowel-like
• sounds with an unimpeded flow
• of the air through the vocal tract.

ltlgt and ltrgt ( rhotics)
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2. Production of liquids

• Laterals
• ?
• ? alveolar lateral approximant
• Tongue tip and blade create a central closure at
  the alveolar ridge
• One or both sides of the tongue hang down,
  allowing the air to pass along the sides ( the
  lateral margins) of the mouth
• This is the articulatory
• configuration of German
• and English /?/ in
• Liebe, viel, leaf, love
• Also referred to as the
• clear / light / cardinal ?
• But, it is not the same /?/ that occurs
• in many variants of English (incl. SSBE)
• before other consonants and syllable-final,
• as in sell, little, lull (Sproat
  Fujimura 1993)

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2. Production of liquids

• Laterals
• ??
• ? velarized alveolar lateral approximant
• Tongue tip and blade create a central closure at
  the alveolar ridge
• One or both sides of the tongue hang down,
  allowing the air to pass along the sides ( the
  lateral margins) of the mouth
• The tongue dorsum creates
• an additional, but less strong
• constriction of the oral cavity
• in the velar region (soft palate)
• ? secondary articulation
• Results in a darker sound quality
• (syllable-final, after vowel, syllabic)

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2. Production of liquids

• Laterals ? and ?? and vowels i and u

? and i have similar sound qualities
??
Compared with ?, ?? is more related (but not
as similar) to u
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2. Production of liquids

• Laterals ? and ?? and vowels i and u

??
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2. Production of liquids

• Rhotics
• Lindau (1985162) the search for a single
  phonetic characteristic which defines rhotics as
  a class has met little success
• Kohler (1995153) on German /r/ /r/ streut
  selbst innerhalb eines einzelnen Sprechers
  allophonisch so sehr in seinen phonetischen
  Werten, daß eine positive phonetische
  Kennzeichnung des Phonems nicht sinnvoll ist
• Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996245) The overall
  unity of rhotic segments relies on historical
  connections between subgroups of rhotics and on
  the choice of the letter ltrgt to represent them
  all
• ? very heterogeneous group of speech sounds
• What makes them r-like? ? A lowering of F2 and
  particularly of F3.
• In view of our definition of liquids, I will
  present three typical rhotic subgroups here with
  reference to English, Russian, and German

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2. Production of liquids

• Rhotics
• Alveolar approximant ? in SSBE
  Retroflex approximant ? in AE

Syllable-initial and final next to the vowel, as
in red, bread, here, earn
Central approximation of the alveolar ridge by
tongue tip or blade without causing friction or a
complete closure
Underside of the tip or blade approximates
(post-)alveolar region of the hard palate
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2. Production of liquids

• Rhotics
• Alveolar Trill r in Russian (or Czech and other
  Slavic languages, also in Scottish English)
• The tongue tip vibrates against the alveolar
  ridge a sequence of individual alveolar taps
  ?
• Based on the same myoelastic-aerodynamic
• principles as the vibration of the vocal folds
• Closure
• Increasing air pressure behind closure
• Causes release of closure
• Decreasing air pressure behind constriction
• Airflow through constriction has sucking
• effect
• Re-establishment of closure
• Russian also has velarized trills, i.e. r?
• (cf. Kochetov 2004)

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2. Production of liquids

• Rhotics
• Uvular approximant ?? in Northern Standard
  German
• Tongue dorsum is raised and approximates the
  upper part of the pharynx and the uvula (cf.
  Kohler 1995).
• Characteristic realization of /r/ in
  syllable-initial position, in onset clusters
  after voiced consonants, and in intervocalic
  contexts
• For example Rad, Brauch, komm da raus
• The tongue position and the resulting phonetic
• quality are similar to German /a/ (i.e. a?)

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2. Production of liquids

• Rhotics
• Uvular approximant ?? in Northern Standard
  German
• Tongue dorsum is raised and approximates the
  upper part of the pharynx and the uvula (cf.
  Kohler 1995).

???
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3. Liquids in the speech code

• Most of the worlds languages use laterals (ca.
  80) and rhotics (gt 50) to differentiate words,
  i.e. in a phonologically distinctive relationship
  with each other and with other speech sounds.
• In Russian (and other Slavic languages) even the
  velarized (dark) and non-velarized
  (light/clear) laterals and trills are
  separate phonemes
• ? /?/ vs. /??/ and /r/ vs. /r?/
• /??o?ka/ (spoon) vs. /?o?ka/ (Alexis Dim.)
• /r?ovna/ (equally) vs. /rov/ (roar)
• (Phonetically, the phonological opposition also
  manifests itself in duration differences and in
  the number of taps in a trill sequence, r? has
  more)
• Languages like German and English have no
  phonological oppositions between light and
  dark liquids
• However,

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3. Liquids in the speech code

• The fact that not every liquid is in the phoneme
  inventory of every language does not mean
• (a) that the missing sounds do not exist in
  these languages !
• (b) that they do not have a communicative
  function / relevance !
• In the best case, a phoneme inventory represents
  the main (or just the orthographically simplest)
  phonetic sound differences that are able to
  differentiate words.
• SSBE has both light and dark liquids, but in
  complementary, allophonic distribution, i.e. at
  different positions in the syllable. Therefore,
  they cannot be used to differentiate words, cf.
  little or lull.
• ? Listeners can use this information to parse the
  speech stream, i.e. to find boundaries of
  linguistic units.
• ? Phonetic cues for the dark /?/ can be
  observed and detected by listeners up to 5
  syllables in advance (0.5-1s, cf. Local 2003,
  West 2007)

?
?
??
??
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3. Liquids in the speech code

• The fact that not every liquid is in the phoneme
  inventory of every language does not mean
• (a) that the missing sounds do not exist in
  these languages !
• (b) that they do not have a communicative
  function / relevance !
• In the best case, a phoneme inventory represents
  the main (or just the orthographically simplest)
  phonetic sound differences that are able to
  differentiate words.
• In Northern Standard German, the uvular
  approximant ?? can be replaced by the alveolar
  trill r (or the uvular trill ?).
  Phonologically r and ?? are free, allophonic
  variants of Northern Standard German /r/. But
  again, this variation has a communicative
  function
• ? Emphasis
• A Ich habe eben nen Raben gesehen.
• B Was hast Du gesehen?
• A nen Raben.
• B Hä?
• A Einen Raben!

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3. Liquids in the speech code

• The ?? occurs as a signal of disgust
• Moreover, some liquids may just occur in some
  regional or social variants of a language.
• For example, some British English dialects (like
  Southern Irish) only have light liquids,
  whereas many variants of American English only
  have dark ones
• ? So, the presence and the distribution of
  light and dark liquids can tell us something
  about the geographical origin of the speaker
• Is there something similar in German? Well, what
  about this?
• (After vowels and/or before /t, d, s/)
• In addition, dark liquids could also be
  sociophonetic markers in German
• ? For example, ?? was observed to occur in
  Jugendsprache (imitating hip American
  English, even beyond AE words and expressions)

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3. Liquids in the speech code

• A remarkable age-related allophonic variation is
  the vocalization of /?/ that can be found in many
  varieties of South-Eastern British English,
  London English, as well as in American English,
  New Zealand English, and Australian English
• concerns all varieties that have the dark ??
  in syllable-final position
• here, loss of the central alveolar closure ?
  leaving an u-like (neither lateral nor rhotic)
  sound (cf. formant values above)
• Most consistently observed for young(er) speakers
• feel, sell, little
• It is assumed that the current variation
  represents a
• sound change, which will completely eliminate
  the
• syllable-final lateral ?? (Hovarth Hovarth
  2002
• Johnson Britain 2007).
• A similar sound change removed the
• lateral in words / contexts like palm, talk,
  ()
• in the 16th century.

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3. Liquids in the speech code

• A remarkable age-related allophonic variation is
  the vocalization of /?/ that can be found in many
  varieties of South-Eastern British English,
  London English, as well as in American English,
  New Zealand English, and Australian English
• Explanations
• ?? - and all other liquids - are one of the
  last sounds acquired by children due to confusion
  with vowels (?? ? u ? ? i ?? ? a)
• Reduces complexity of speech sound by 1 gesture
• and this is the driving force of sound change
• There is a general tendency to reduce/eliminate
  the
• difficult alveolar tongue-tip gestures in spoken
• communication (cf. Kohler 1995) Has_ma,
• mip mir, ume petite, im my ow? car, ()
• Follows the general tendency to avoid consonantal
• syllable codas, i.e. change in CV direction
• Consonant articulations are weaker
  syllable-finally
• than syllable-initially (cf. Sproat Fujimura
  1993)

??
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3. Liquids in the speech code

• It fits into this picture that the allophone of
  /r/ in syllable codas of Northern Standard German
  is the again phonetically similar
  vowel-like ? sound (cf. formant values ?? vs.
  a? above) .
• ? hier her, vor, Uhr, kurz, ()
• Moreover, the German /l/ can become an ?-like
  sound, when it occurs in coda clusters after
  similar vowels (cf. Kohler 1995)
• ? den Film gucken, ein Glas Milch, () ??
  or ????
• These are also examples of liquid vocalization
• But, unlike in the English varieties, there is no
  longer age-related variation. The ? has become
  the standard allophone, the ? is at least very
  frequent across speakers of all age groups.

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4. Summary / Take-home message

• Liquid
• collective term for a very heterogeneous,
  non-coherent group of sounds that comprise (at
  least) laterals and rhotics e.g., ?, ??(?), ?,
  ?, ??, r, r?
• Defined with reference to both phonetic and
  phonological criteria
• non-nasal, sonorant, sustained consonants
• Name refers to unimpeded air flow through pharynx
  and oral cavity
• But we have also seen other reasons why liquids
  may be called liquids
• They flow to both sides of the
  consonant-vowel distinction
• ? vocalization of ?? u and ?? ?. So,
  /?,r/ are consonant phonemes with vowel(-like)
  allophones, which can even be syllabic, as in
  people, little, ()
• ? Liquids are confused with vowels during
  (native-)language acquisition
• They also melt into other
  sounds (long-domain resonances of dark ?? in
  SSBE cf. Kelly and Local
  1986)
• Most of the worlds languages use (different
  kinds of) liquids to distinguish words as well as
  for other communicative purposes (for conveying
  emphasis or disgust, as boundary signals or
  sociophonetic markers, )

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5. References

• Chomsky, N . M. Halle (1968). The sound pattern
  of English. New York Harper Row.
• Duenas, J. (2001). Lateral Liquid Velarization in
  L1 Spanish/L2 English Phonology.
  http//www.javierduenas.com/PROJECTS/
  Velarized_Lateral_Liquids.pdf
• Halle, M. (1992). Phonological features. In W.
  Bright (ed.), International encyclopedia of
  linguistics (pp. 207-212), Oxford OUP.
• Horvath, B R. Horvath (2002). The
  geolinguistics of /l/ vocalization in Australia
  and New Zealand. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6,
  319-346.
• Johnson, W. D. Britain (2007). L-vocalization
  as a natural phenomenon explorations in
  sociophonology. Language Sciences 29, 294-315.
• Kelly, J. J. Local (1986). Long-domain
  resonance patterns in English. Proceedings of IEE
  Conference on speech input/output Techniques and
  applications, 304309.
• Kochetov, A. (2004). From phonetic differences to
  phonological asymmetries Secondary articulation
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  Conference on Laboratory Phonology, Urbana, USA.
• Kohler, K.J. (1995). Einführung in die Phonetik
  des Deutschen. Berlin Erich Schmidt.
• Ladefoged, P. I. Maddieson (1996). The Sounds
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• Lindau, M. (1985). The story of /r/. In V.A.
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• Local, J. (2003). Variable domains and variable
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• Maddieson, I. (1984). Patterns of sounds.
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• Niebuhr, O. (2004). Intrinsic pitch in opening
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• Walsh Dickey, L. (1997). The phonology of
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