The Phonetics and Phonology of Retroflexes Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 fax: +31 30 253 6000 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl/ Cover illustration by Silke Hamann ISBN 90-76864-39-X NUR 632 Copyright © 2003 Silke Hamann. All rights reserved. The Phonetics and Phonology of Retroflexes Fonetiek en fonologie van retroflexen (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, Prof. Dr. W.H. Gispen, ingevolge het besluit van het College voor Promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op vrijdag 6 juni 2003 des middags te 4.15 uur door Silke Renate Hamann geboren op 25 februari 1971 te Lampertheim, Duitsland Promotoren: Prof. dr. T. A. Hall (Leipzig University) Prof. dr. Wim Zonneveld (Utrecht University) Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Markedness of retroflexes 3 1.2 Phonetic cues and phonological features 6 1.3 Outline of the dissertation 8 Part I: Phonetics of Retroflexes 2 Articulatory variation and common properties of retroflexes 11 2.1 Phonetic terminology 12 2.2 Parameters of articulatory variation 14 2.2.1 Speaker dependency 15 2.2.2 Vowel context 16 2.2.3 Speech rate 17 2.2.4 Manner dependency 19 2.2.4.1 Plosives 19 2.2.4.2 Nasals 20 2.2.4.3 Fricatives 21 2.2.4.4 Affricates 23 2.2.4.5 Laterals 24 2.2.4.6 Rhotics 25 2.2.4.7 Retroflex vowels 26 2.2.5 Language family 27 2.2.6 Iventory size 28 2.3 Common articulatory properties of retroflexion 32 2.3.1 Apicality 33 2.3.2 Posteriority 33 2.3.3 Sublingual cavity 34 2.3.4 Retraction 34 2.3.5 Summary of characteristic properties 39 2.4 Retroflex fricatives in Slavic languages 40 2.4.1 Polish 40 2.4.2 Russian 41 2.4.3 Slavic postalveolar fricatives as non-prototypical retroflexes 42 2.5 Secondary palatalization of retroflexes 44 2.5.1 Palatalization as change in primary articulation 44 2.5.2 Counterexamples: Toda and Kashmiri 47 2.6 Summary and outlook 50 ii Contents 3 Acoustic cues and perceptual properties of retroflexes 53 3.1 Acoustic cues used for the description of retroflexes 54 3.2 Acoustic realizations of the articulatory properties of retroflexes 55 3.2.1 Apicality 55 3.2.2 Posteriority 56 3.2.3 Sub-lingual cavity 57 3.2.4 Retraction 58 3.2.5 Summary of acoustic consequences 58 3.3 Cues of retroflex consonants 59 3.3.1 Formant frequencies 59 3.3.2 Spectral shape 63 3.3.2.1 Mandarin apical post-alveolar fricatives 65 3.3.2.2 Polish post-alveolar fricatives 65 3.3.2.3 Toda apical post-alveolar sibilants 66 3.3.3 Further acoustic cues 68 3.4 Vowel dependency of cues 69 3.5 Symmetrical spread of retroflex cues 72 3.6 Retroflexion as a weak cue and its possible enhancement 76 3.7 Acoustic incompatibility: Retroflexion and palatalization 77 3.8 Summary 78 Part II: Phonology of Retroflexes 4 Retroflex processes and their phonetic grounding 81 4.1 Retroflexion in rhotic context 83 4.1.1 Examples 83 4.1.2 Phonetic grounding 87 4.2 Patterning with back vowels 90 4.2.1 Examples 90 4.2.2 Phonetic grounding 92 4.3 Non-occurrence of retroflexes in front vowel context 94 4.3.1 De-retroflexion in front vowel context 95 4.3.2 Change of front vowels in retroflex context 96 4.3.2.1 Retraction of front vowels 97 4.3.2.2 Lowering of front vowels 99 4.3.2.3 Diphthongization of front vowels 100 4.3.2.4 Rounding of front vowels 101 4.3.2.5 Retroflexion and secondary palatalization 102 4.3.3 Phonetic grounding 102 4.3.4 Exception: The ruki-rule in Sanskrit 107 4.4 Retroflexion of vowels 111 4.4.1 Examples 112 4.4.2 Phonetic grounding 113 4.5 Phonotactics of retroflex segments 114 Contents iii 4.5.1 Examples 115 4.5.2 Phonetic grounding 117 4.6 Assimilation of retroflexion 118 4.6.1 Local assimilation 119 4.6.2 Non-local assimilation 122 4.6.3 Phonetic grounding 123 4.7 Excursion: Retroflex fricatives in Toda 125 4.8 Conclusion 127 5 Phonological representations of retroflexes 131 5.1 The functions of features 132 5.2 Featural representations 134 5.2.1 Jakobson, Fant, & Halle (1952) 134 5.2.2 Chomsky & Halle (1968) 136 5.2.3 Feature Geometry 137 5.2.3.1 Basic notions 137 5.2.3.2 Proposals for retroflexes patterning with vowels 139 5.2.3.3 Why does FG fail? 141 5.3 Alternative approaches 144 5.3.1 Flemming: Dispersion Theory of Contrast 144 5.3.2 Hamilton: Gestural and Perceptual Theory of Markedness 148 5.3.3 Steriade: Licensing by Cue 150 5.3.4 Boersma: Functional Phonology 153 5.4 Featural representation of retroflexes: Present approach 157 5.4.1 Perceptual representations 159 5.4.2 Articulatory representations 161 5.5 Conclusion 164 6 Analysis of retroflex processes 167 6.1 Constraints on perceptual representations 167 6.2 Constraints on articulatory representations 170 6.3 Analysis of phonological processes of retroflexes 173 6.3.1 Retroflexion via rhotics 174 6.3.2 Retroflexion via back vowels 177 6.3.3 Non-occurrence of retroflexes with front vowels 179 6.3.3.1 De-retroflexion 179 6.3.3.2 Vowel retraction and lowering 180 6.3.3.3 Vowel diphthongization 187 6.3.3.4 Vowel rounding 187 6.3.3.5 Secondary palatalization 189 6.3.4 Retroflexion of vowels 191 6.3.5 Phonotactics of retroflex segments 191 6.3.6 Assimilation of retroflexion 193 6.4 Conclusion 197 iv Contents 7 Conclusion 199 7.1 Phonetic characteristics of retroflexes 199 7.2 Phonological representations of retroflex processes 202 7.3 Alleged universality of the retroflex class 204 7.4 Future research 207 Samenvatting in het Nederlands 209 Curriculum Vitae 211 References 213 Index 223 Acknowledgements As I myself am not a big fan of extensive acknowledgements, I want to spare the reader long lists of fellow students, house animals, or hotshot phonologists and phoneticians to whom I talked for less than a minute. But there are some people I really want to thank here since they contributed to the development of this book. First of all, these are my two supervisors, Wim Zonneveld and Tracy Alan Hall. Both of them left me great freedom in my work, and thus gave me the opportunity to find my own way. I want to specifically thank Wim for plainly believing in me and always encouraging my ideas, and Tracy for teaching me how to conduct thorough, precise research and how to ask the right questions. Furthermore, I want to thank the members of my reading committee Colin Ewen, Vincent van Heuven, Janet Grijzenhout, René Kager, and Daan Wissing for their helpful comments. In addition, this thesis profitted strongly from the careful reading and thorough comments by Paul Boersma (I have to apologize to him for not having discussed my ideas with him until the last minute). I also want to thank Sabine Zerbian and Hristo Velkov for helping me with the literature and Jörg Dreyer for support in technical matters during my stays at the ZAS Berlin. A thank you goes out to Thorsten, who brought me to linguistics, though unintentionally and via detours. All other friends and colleagues (from Utrecht University, the ZAS Berlin, and the rest of the world) who are dear to me will be thanked in person for their social (and other) support! Lastly and most importantly I want to thank Paul for the happiness he has brought to my life outside of linguistics. Abbreviations and symbols Abbreviations ABL ablative case AG agent AGR agreement AUG augmented C consonant DAT dative case DEF definite FG Feature Geometry FP Functional Phonology NOM nominative case OT Optimality Theory PASS passive POSS possessive PRES present tense PS person RE realis REM remote SG singular SUP superlative V vowel Symbols // underlying representation [] phonetic representation ⎆ primary stress ⎅ secondary stress . syllable boundary (ω )ω prosodic word boundaries * violation of a constraint ! fatal violation of a constraint optimal candidate 1 Introduction At the outset of this dissertation one might pose the question why retroflex consonants should still be of interest for phonetics and for phonological theory since ample work on this segmental class already exists. Bhat (1973) conducted a quite extensive study on retroflexion that treated the geographical spread of this class, some phonological processes its members can undergo, and the phonetic motivation for these processes. Furthermore, several phonological representations of retroflexes have been proposed in the framework of Feature Geometry, as in work by Sagey (1986), Pulleyblank (1989), Gnanadesikan (1993), and Clements (2001). Most recently, Steriade (1995, 2001) has discussed the perceptual cues of retroflexes and has argued that the distribution of these cues can account for the phonotactic restrictions on retroflexes and their assimilatory behaviour. Purely phonetically oriented studies such as Dixit (1990) and Simonsen, Moen & Cowen (2000) have shown the large articulatory variation that can be found for retroflexes and hint at the insufficiency of existing definitions. What does the present dissertation contribute to the topic of retroflexes that is new and has not been said before? There are four main points, summarized under (1). (1) (a) a new phonetic definition (b) description of cross-linguistically common phonological processes (c) phonetic grounding for these processes (d) phonological analysis of these processes (in OT) First of all, a new phonetic definition of ‘retroflex’ is proposed based on four common articulatory properties, see (1a).