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R-colored vowel

May 15, 2023

Not to be confused with Rhotacism (sound change).
"Vocalic r" redirects here. For syllabic rhotics more broadly, see Syllabic consonant.

In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant.[1] R-colored vowels can be articulated in various ways: the tip or blade of the tongue may be turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel (a retroflex articulation) or the back of the tongue may be bunched. In addition, the vocal tract may often be constricted in the region of the epiglottis.[1]

R-colored vowel
◌˞
ɚ
ɝ
ɹ̩
IPA Number327
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
Entity (decimal)˞
Unicode (hex)U+02DE
X-SAMPA@`
Spectrogram of [ə] and its rhotacized counterpart [ɚ]
Sound sample regular and r-colored schwa
Problems playing this file? See media help.

R-colored vowels are exceedingly rare, occurring in less than one percent of all languages.[1] However, they occur in two of the most widely spoken languages: North American English and Mandarin Chinese. In North American English, they are found in words such as dollar, butter, third, color, and nurse. They also occur in Canadian French, some varieties of Portuguese,[2][3][4] some Jutlandic dialects of Danish, as well as in a few indigenous languages of the Americas and of Asia, including Serrano and Yurok in the United States, Luobohe Miao in China, and Badaga in India.[contradictory]

Notation

In the IPA, an r-colored vowel is indicated by a hook diacritic ⟨ ˞ ⟩ placed to the right of the regular symbol for the vowel. For example, the IPA symbol for schwa is ⟨ə⟩, while the IPA symbol for an r-colored schwa is ⟨ɚ⟩. This diacritic is the hook of ⟨ɚ⟩, a symbol constructed by John Samuel Kenyon along with ⟨ᶔ⟩ by adding the retroflex hook (right hook) to ⟨ə⟩ and ⟨ɜ⟩.[5] Both ⟨ɚ⟩ and ⟨ɝ⟩ were proposed as IPA symbols by editors of the American Speech in 1939 to distinguish it from [əɹ].[6]

The IPA adopted several ways to transcribe r-colored vowels in its 1947 chart: the turned r ⟨ɹ⟩; the superscript turned r ⟨əʴ⟩, ⟨aʴ⟩, ⟨eʴ⟩, ⟨ɔʴ⟩, etc.; the retroflex hook ⟨ᶕ⟩, ⟨ᶏ⟩, ⟨ᶒ⟩, ⟨ᶗ⟩, etc.;[7] and added ⟨ɚ⟩ as a variant of ⟨ᶕ⟩ in its 1951 chart.[8] In 1976 the retroflex hook was dropped due to insufficient usage.[9] In 1989, at the Kiel Convention, the hook of ⟨ɚ⟩ and ⟨ɝ⟩ was adopted as a diacritic placed on the right side of the vowel symbol for r-colored vowels, e.g. ⟨ɛ˞ o˞ ɔ˞⟩.[10] Following the convention of alternating ⟨ɜ⟩ and ⟨ə⟩ for non-rhotic accents, ⟨ɝ⟩ and ⟨ɚ⟩ signify stressed and unstressed, respectively, rather than a difference in phonetic quality.[11] The use of the superscript turned r (əʴ) is still commonly seen.

Examples

English

See also: Rhoticity in English
 
"Where they're at is", "Where the rat is", and "Where their rat is" in American English
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R-colored vowels are found in most rhotic forms of English, including General American and Irish English. The r-colored vowels of General American can be written with "vowel-r" digraphs:[12]

  • [ɚ]: hearse, assert, mirth (stressed, conventionally written [ɝ]); standard, dinner, Lincolnshire (unstressed)
  • [ɑ˞]: start, car
  • [ɔ˞]: north, war

In words such as start, many speakers have r-coloring only in the coda of the vowel, rather than as a simultaneous articulation modifying the whole duration. This can be represented in IPA by using a succession of two symbols such as [ɑɚ] or [ɑɹ], rather than the unitary symbol [ɑ˞].[12]

Singing

In European classical singing, dropping or weakening of r-colored vowels has been nearly universal and is a standard part of classical vocal training. However, there have always been other singing styles in which r-colored vowels are given their full emphasis, including traditional Irish singing styles and those of many performers of country music.[citation needed] In certain particular cases, a vowel + /r/ is pronounced instead as two syllables: a non-rhotic vowel followed by a syllabic /r/.[citation needed]

Mandarin Chinese

Main article: Erhua

In Mandarin, the rhotacized ending of some words is the prime way by which to distinguish speakers of Standard Northern Mandarin (Beijing Mandarin) and Southwestern Mandarin from those of other forms of Mandarin in China. Mandarin speakers call this phenomenon erhua. In many words, the -r suffix (simplified Chinese: 儿; traditional Chinese: 兒) is added to indicate some meaning changes. If the word ends in a velar nasal (ng), the final consonant is lost and the vowel becomes nasalized. Major cities that have this form of rhotacized ending include Beijing, Tianjin, Tangshan, Shenyang, Changchun, Jilin, Harbin, and Qiqihar. This erhua has since spread to other provincial capitals not home to Standard Mandarin, such as Shijiazhuang, Jinan, Xian, Chongqing, and Chengdu.

In rhotic accents of Standard Mandarin, such as those from Beijing, Tianjin, most of the Hebei province (e.g. Tangshan, Baoding, Chengde), eastern Inner Mongolia (e.g. Chifeng, Hailar), and in the Northeast, vocalic r occurs as a diminutive marker of nouns (pinyin: ér) and the perfective aspect particle (了; le). This also occurs in the middle syllables of compound words consisting of three or more syllables. For example, the name of the famous restaurant Go Believe (狗不理) in Tianjin is pronounced as 'Gourbli' (Gǒu(r)bùlǐ → Gǒurblǐ). The name of the street Dazhalan (大栅栏) in Beijing is pronounced as 'Da-shi-lar' (Dàshànlàn(r) → Dàshílàr).

Quebec French

In Quebec French, the vowel /œ̃/ is generally pronounced [œ̃˞] and the r-colored vowels are also pronounced in loan words.[citation needed] For example, the word hamburger can be pronounced [ambɚɡɚ], the word soccer can be pronounced [sɒkɚ] etc.

Other examples

In the 1930s the Dravidian language Badaga had two degrees of rhoticity among all five of its vowels, but few speakers maintain the distinction today, and then only in one or two vowels. An example is non-rhotic [be] "mouth", slightly rhotacized ("half retroflexed") [be˞] "bangle", and fully rhotacized ("fully retroflexed") [be˞˞] "crop".[13]

The Algic language Yurok illustrated rhotic vowel harmony. The non-high vowels /a/, /e/ and /o/ could become /ɚ/ in a word that has /ɚ/. For example, the root /nahks-/ 'three' became /nɚhks-/ in the word /nɚhksɚʔɚjɬ/ 'three (animals or birds)'.[14]

Luobohe Miao also contains [ɚ].[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Peter Ladefoged; Ian Maddieson (1996). The sounds of the world's languages. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 313. ISBN 0-631-19815-6. from the original on 2016-05-10. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  2. ^ (in Portuguese) Acoustic-phonetic characteristics of the Brazilian Portuguese's retroflex /r/: data from respondents in Pato Branco, Paraná 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine. Irineu da Silva Ferraz. Pages 19–21
  3. ^ (in Portuguese) Syllable coda /r/ in the "capital" of the Paulista hinterland: sociolinguistic analysis 2013-09-26 at the Wayback Machine. Cândida Mara Britto LEITE. Page 111 (page 2 in the attached PDF)
  4. ^ (in Portuguese) Callou, Dinah. Leite, Yonne. "Iniciação à Fonética e à Fonologia". Jorge Zahar Editora 2001, p. 24
  5. ^ John Samuel Kenyon (1935). American pronunciation: a textbook of phonetics for students of English. G. Wahr. p. 191. from the original on 2021-08-16. Retrieved 2020-03-16.
  6. ^ "A Petition". American Speech. Duke University Press. 14 (3): 206–208. October 1939. doi:10.2307/451421. JSTOR 451421.
  7. ^ Association phonétique internationale (1947). "The International Phonetic Alphabet (revised to 1947)". Le Maître Phonétique. Troisième série. 25 (88). Supplement. JSTOR 44748304.
  8. ^ Association phonétique internationale (1952). "The International Phonetic Alphabet (revised to 1951)". Le Maître Phonétique. Troisième série. 30 (97). Front matter. JSTOR 44748475.
  9. ^ Wells, John C. (1976). "The Association's Alphabet". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 6 (1): 2–3. doi:10.1017/S0025100300001420. S2CID 249403800.
  10. ^ International Phonetic Association (1989). "Report on the 1989 Kiel Convention". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 19 (1): 67–80. doi:10.1017/S0025100300003868. S2CID 249412330.
  11. ^ Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Volume 1: An Introduction (pp. i–xx, 1–278). Cambridge University Press. p. 121. ISBN 0-52129719-2 .
  12. ^ a b John Ellery Clark; Colin Yallop; Janet Fletcher (2007). An introduction to phonetics and phonology (third ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-4051-3083-7. from the original on 2016-06-10. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  13. ^ http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/appendix/languages/badaga/badaga.html 2021-02-11 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ "Yurok – Survey of California and Other Indian Languages". linguistics.berkeley.edu. from the original on 2013-03-01. Retrieved 2013-02-12.
  15. ^ "Luobohe Miao language". Omniglot.com. from the original on 2017-11-26. Retrieved 2017-11-23.

Further reading

  • L. F. Aungst; J. V. Frick (1964). "Auditory discrimination ability and consistency of articulation of /r/". Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. 29: 76–85. doi:10.1044/jshd.2901.76. PMID 14122671.
  • J. F. Curtis; J. C. Hardy (1959). "A phonetic study of misarticulation of /r/". Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. 2 (3): 244–257. doi:10.1044/jshr.0203.244.
  • Christine Ristuccia (2002-09-30). . Advance for Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists. 12 (39): 21. Archived from the original on 2009-02-10. Retrieved 2018-12-26.
  • C. L. Ristuccia; D. W. Gilbert; J. E. Ristuccia (2005). The Entire World of R Book of Elicitation Techniques. Say It Right. Tybee Island, GA. ISBN 0-9760490-7-4.

May 15, 2023
colored, vowel, confused, with, rhotacism, sound, change, vocalic, redirects, here, syllabic, rhotics, more, broadly, syllabic, consonant, phonetics, colored, rhotic, vowel, also, called, retroflex, vowel, vocalic, rhotacized, vowel, vowel, that, modified, tha. Not to be confused with Rhotacism sound change Vocalic r redirects here For syllabic rhotics more broadly see Syllabic consonant In phonetics an r colored or rhotic vowel also called a retroflex vowel vocalic r or a rhotacized vowel is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant 1 R colored vowels can be articulated in various ways the tip or blade of the tongue may be turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel a retroflex articulation or the back of the tongue may be bunched In addition the vocal tract may often be constricted in the region of the epiglottis 1 R colored vowel ɚɝɹ IPA Number327Audio sample source source source helpEncodingEntity decimal amp 734 Unicode hex U 02DEX SAMPA ImageSpectrogram of e and its rhotacized counterpart ɚ Sound sample regular and r colored schwa source source Problems playing this file See media help R colored vowels are exceedingly rare occurring in less than one percent of all languages 1 However they occur in two of the most widely spoken languages North American English and Mandarin Chinese In North American English they are found in words such as dollar butter third color and nurse They also occur in Canadian French some varieties of Portuguese 2 3 4 some Jutlandic dialects of Danish as well as in a few indigenous languages of the Americas and of Asia including Serrano and Yurok in the United States Luobohe Miao in China and Badaga in India contradictory Contents 1 Notation 2 Examples 2 1 English 2 1 1 Singing 2 2 Mandarin Chinese 2 3 Quebec French 2 4 Other examples 3 See also 4 References 5 Further readingNotation EditIn the IPA an r colored vowel is indicated by a hook diacritic placed to the right of the regular symbol for the vowel For example the IPA symbol for schwa is e while the IPA symbol for an r colored schwa is ɚ This diacritic is the hook of ɚ a symbol constructed by John Samuel Kenyon along with ᶔ by adding the retroflex hook right hook to e and ɜ 5 Both ɚ and ɝ were proposed as IPA symbols by editors of the American Speech in 1939 to distinguish it from eɹ 6 The IPA adopted several ways to transcribe r colored vowels in its 1947 chart the turned r ɹ the superscript turned r eʴ aʴ eʴ ɔʴ etc the retroflex hook ᶕ ᶏ ᶒ ᶗ etc 7 and added ɚ as a variant of ᶕ in its 1951 chart 8 In 1976 the retroflex hook was dropped due to insufficient usage 9 In 1989 at the Kiel Convention the hook of ɚ and ɝ was adopted as a diacritic placed on the right side of the vowel symbol for r colored vowels e g ɛ o ɔ 10 Following the convention of alternating ɜ and e for non rhotic accents ɝ and ɚ signify stressed and unstressed respectively rather than a difference in phonetic quality 11 The use of the superscript turned r eʴ is still commonly seen Examples EditEnglish Edit See also Rhoticity in English Where they re at is Where the rat is and Where their rat is in American English source source source Problems playing this file See media help R colored vowels are found in most rhotic forms of English including General American and Irish English The r colored vowels of General American can be written with vowel r digraphs 12 ɚ hearse assert mirth stressed conventionally written ɝ standard dinner Lincolnshire unstressed ɑ start car ɔ north warIn words such as start many speakers have r coloring only in the coda of the vowel rather than as a simultaneous articulation modifying the whole duration This can be represented in IPA by using a succession of two symbols such as ɑɚ or ɑɹ rather than the unitary symbol ɑ 12 Singing Edit In European classical singing dropping or weakening of r colored vowels has been nearly universal and is a standard part of classical vocal training However there have always been other singing styles in which r colored vowels are given their full emphasis including traditional Irish singing styles and those of many performers of country music citation needed In certain particular cases a vowel r is pronounced instead as two syllables a non rhotic vowel followed by a syllabic r citation needed Mandarin Chinese Edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed May 2018 Learn how and when to remove this template message Main article Erhua In Mandarin the rhotacized ending of some words is the prime way by which to distinguish speakers of Standard Northern Mandarin Beijing Mandarin and Southwestern Mandarin from those of other forms of Mandarin in China Mandarin speakers call this phenomenon erhua In many words the r suffix simplified Chinese 儿 traditional Chinese 兒 is added to indicate some meaning changes If the word ends in a velar nasal ng the final consonant is lost and the vowel becomes nasalized Major cities that have this form of rhotacized ending include Beijing Tianjin Tangshan Shenyang Changchun Jilin Harbin and Qiqihar This erhua has since spread to other provincial capitals not home to Standard Mandarin such as Shijiazhuang Jinan Xian Chongqing and Chengdu In rhotic accents of Standard Mandarin such as those from Beijing Tianjin most of the Hebei province e g Tangshan Baoding Chengde eastern Inner Mongolia e g Chifeng Hailar and in the Northeast vocalic r occurs as a diminutive marker of nouns pinyin er and the perfective aspect particle 了 le This also occurs in the middle syllables of compound words consisting of three or more syllables For example the name of the famous restaurant Go Believe 狗不理 in Tianjin is pronounced as Gourbli Gǒu r bulǐ Gǒurblǐ The name of the street Dazhalan 大栅栏 in Beijing is pronounced as Da shi lar Dashanlan r Dashilar Quebec French Edit In Quebec French the vowel œ is generally pronounced œ and the r colored vowels are also pronounced in loan words citation needed For example the word hamburger can be pronounced ambɚɡɚ the word soccer can be pronounced sɒkɚ etc Other examples Edit In the 1930s the Dravidian language Badaga had two degrees of rhoticity among all five of its vowels but few speakers maintain the distinction today and then only in one or two vowels An example is non rhotic be mouth slightly rhotacized half retroflexed be bangle and fully rhotacized fully retroflexed be crop 13 The Algic language Yurok illustrated rhotic vowel harmony The non high vowels a e and o could become ɚ in a word that has ɚ For example the root nahks three became nɚhks in the word nɚhksɚʔɚjɬ three animals or birds 14 Luobohe Miao also contains ɚ 15 See also EditLinking R Rhotic consonant r like Syllabic consonantReferences Edit a b c Peter Ladefoged Ian Maddieson 1996 The sounds of the world s languages Wiley Blackwell p 313 ISBN 0 631 19815 6 Archived from the original on 2016 05 10 Retrieved 2016 09 24 in Portuguese Acoustic phonetic characteristics of the Brazilian Portuguese s retroflex r data from respondents in Pato Branco Parana Archived 2016 03 03 at the Wayback Machine Irineu da Silva Ferraz Pages 19 21 in Portuguese Syllable coda r in the capital of the Paulista hinterland sociolinguistic analysis Archived 2013 09 26 at the Wayback Machine Candida Mara Britto LEITE Page 111 page 2 in the attached PDF in Portuguese Callou Dinah Leite Yonne Iniciacao a Fonetica e a Fonologia Jorge Zahar Editora 2001 p 24 John Samuel Kenyon 1935 American pronunciation a textbook of phonetics for students of English G Wahr p 191 Archived from the original on 2021 08 16 Retrieved 2020 03 16 A Petition American Speech Duke University Press 14 3 206 208 October 1939 doi 10 2307 451421 JSTOR 451421 Association phonetique internationale 1947 The International Phonetic Alphabet revised to 1947 Le Maitre Phonetique Troisieme serie 25 88 Supplement JSTOR 44748304 Association phonetique internationale 1952 The International Phonetic Alphabet revised to 1951 Le Maitre Phonetique Troisieme serie 30 97 Front matter JSTOR 44748475 Wells John C 1976 The Association s Alphabet Journal of the International Phonetic Association 6 1 2 3 doi 10 1017 S0025100300001420 S2CID 249403800 International Phonetic Association 1989 Report on the 1989 Kiel Convention Journal of the International Phonetic Association 19 1 67 80 doi 10 1017 S0025100300003868 S2CID 249412330 Wells John C 1982 Accents of English Volume 1 An Introduction pp i xx 1 278 Cambridge University Press p 121 ISBN 0 52129719 2 a b John Ellery Clark Colin Yallop Janet Fletcher 2007 An introduction to phonetics and phonology third ed Malden MA Blackwell p 66 ISBN 978 1 4051 3083 7 Archived from the original on 2016 06 10 Retrieved 2016 09 24 http www phonetics ucla edu appendix languages badaga badaga html Archived 2021 02 11 at the Wayback Machine Yurok Survey of California and Other Indian Languages linguistics berkeley edu Archived from the original on 2013 03 01 Retrieved 2013 02 12 Luobohe Miao language Omniglot com Archived from the original on 2017 11 26 Retrieved 2017 11 23 Further reading EditL F Aungst J V Frick 1964 Auditory discrimination ability and consistency of articulation of r Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 29 76 85 doi 10 1044 jshd 2901 76 PMID 14122671 J F Curtis J C Hardy 1959 A phonetic study of misarticulation of r Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 2 3 244 257 doi 10 1044 jshr 0203 244 Christine Ristuccia 2002 09 30 Phonologic strategy for r remediation Advance for Speech Language Pathologists and Audiologists 12 39 21 Archived from the original on 2009 02 10 Retrieved 2018 12 26 C L Ristuccia D W Gilbert J E Ristuccia 2005 The Entire World of R Book of Elicitation Techniques Say It Right Tybee Island GA ISBN 0 9760490 7 4 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title R colored vowel amp oldid 1148693798, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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