Novelty Bobble has a point that IPA isn’t perfect. It is an attempt to render in discrete categories (each category represented by a symbol) what is a fluid and complex continuum of many acoustic and biophysical factors. Just read a few pages of the late Peter Ladefoged’s (sp?) Sounds of the World’s Languages to see how messy reality is, and how much variation there is among each individual, and even within each individual from moment to moment.
But, I think NB exaggerates when he states that Internet fora are useless for discussing pronunciation, and that IPA isn’t generally a useful tool for this. Didn’t I just state a few posts ago that I learned something specific from this thread, based on a few posts among myself, Hibernicus, and Acsenray, even though we never met up in a pub? (Though I’d love to! Shall we say the King’s Arms in Galway, next Friday at 11 PM? ;))
And as for “r”…no one is disputing your perception of an “r” phoneme includes situations where the acoustic parameters of a rhotic consonant simply are absent, and there’s nothing wring with that. This arises from your experience of seeing spelled "r"s in similar acoustic situations, in your dialect of English. No biggie. But surely my suggestion of saving the rhotic claim for “pirate joke” situations is a helpful one? Or maybe you’re not familiar with the pirate jokes I’m talking about. Okay…how about a child imitating the roar of a noisy motorcycle being started?
The “intrusive R” you perceive in “Tuna Oil” is not an intentional addition, neither is the “R” which Novelty Bobble perceives in some American (and Australian) pronunciations of “Pahsta”
I fail to see the objectivity of your apparent argument that when you perceive something, it is there, when Novelty Bobble does, he is mistaken.
“Intentionality” is important for some aspects of language, including some ways of considering pronunciation, but not for what we’re talking about here right now. The “intrusive r” that has been mentioned is not a perceptual thing. It’s a real sound. (And it’s rare – you might not have ever come across it.) The “r” that N B thinks he hears sometimes is, likewise, actually the absence of a real sound. I’m not sure why this is difficult to understand.
It’s a good question, but it’s really hard to answer because there is so much variation between different Irish accents. In an earlier post I mentioned the way “father” is pronounced in my mother’s native west of Ireland accent.
Speaking for my own accent, I will hazard: /fɑːðəɹ/ and /bɒðəɹ/.
Spend a few minutes looking at spectrograms, especially as “a unifying property of rhotics might be found in the acoustic domain, given the articulatory variation in both place and manner of different types of rhotics” (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996, p. 244).
You are suggesting that what I hear is an absence of a sound. Not sure how that works seeing as err…I have heard it, therefore it is a real sound. If I say the standard phonic “a” it is not the same as the first “a” in the US “pasta”. So it is different and a “real” sound. something is added not removed. That added bit is what I hear as an “r”
True, you are classifying as an “r” a real thing, but that thing is known as “non-rhotic”, because of a combination of the intention of the speaker (who perceives no “r”) and its acoustic properties (it is objectively different from the rhotic “r” – check out some spectrograms). I am not an expert on this, but the objective, acoustic description of this thing you’re noticing is probably some temporal lengthening of the syllable, just as you mentioned it might be, which you are used to encountering in combination with the quality of the vowel (lowness, roundedness, etc.) in places where there is an orthographic (written) “r”.
In terms of actual sound, nothing has been “added.” One vowel has simply been changed to another. An “R sound” in linguistic terms is a consonant. When you change one vowel to another vowel, there is no added consonant. So if you are going to discuss pronunciation in neutral terms, you have to give up the concept that an “R sound” has been added there.
Perhaps, but I couldn’t understand him because he talks funny
Anyhow. I think we’ve done this sideline to death so I shall take Acsenray’s advice and bow out. I’m not adding to the discussion in any meaningful way.
But it just occurs to me that the intrusive-r only appears trailing a “broad” vowel sound. For instance, “Candy _ in the jar” or “Go play _ over there” would not separate the vowels with a ghost consonant. Only words that end in a, o or u type vowels get the intrusive-r.
I am pretty sure that the British pronunciation of “fought” would not be confused with the term used for the after effects of their enthusiasm for baked beans.
Basically, intrusive r only occurs after vowels which COULD have been the remnants of a syllable which would end for rhotic speakers with /r/.
That’s not the case for the vowels ending “candy” (/i/) or “play” (/eI/), because, as far as these accents are concerned, there’s no such thing as a word ending directly in /ir/ or /eIr/. The non-rhotic pronunciations of “ear” and “air”, for example, end in schwas (/I@/ and /E@/), so there’s no chance that non-rhotic pronunciations of the syllables ending “candy” or “play” are also non-rhotic pronunciations of syllables ending in /r/.
I understand what the “intrusive R” means, I actually pronounce it myself sometimes.
My point is that it’s a result of the tongue re-positioning for the vowel sounds while voicing is maintained, not an explicit, deliberate “R” being inserted.
Novelty Bubble also perceives an “R” sound in the way some speakers (including me) pronounce “pahsta” due to the way Novelty Bubble, and those who have similar accents, pronounce words like “part” , “farm” , versus their pronunciation of pasta.
I don’t agree with Novelty Bubble’s pronunciation of “Pasta”, I don’t think that there’s an “R” in how I pronounce “pasta”, but Novelty Bubble’s perception of it is every bit as valid as that of Ascenray’s.
Ascenray challenges this, leaving the impression that his perceptions are valid, and others perceptions are not.
As for determining which pronunciations are correct, I maintain all variations have their legitimacy.
For those who are really pedantic, then I would look at the name of the language for a clue as to where one might source pronunciation guidelines.
My more serious answer to you, JohnB, is that the acoustic signal of which you speak will tend to be construed by listeners whose variety of English is more rhotic as a misplaced phoneme, but a phoneme nonetheless, but construed by listeners whose variety of English is less rhotic as a non-phonemic sound (phone) whose presence is necessary in that situation for the speaker’s (though not necessarily for the listener’s) variety of English. No big deal.
Nobody is arguing that it is explicit or deliberate. It’s just there. My accent has similar quirks. I don’t explicitly or deliberately pronounce “str” as “shtr,” but, when people point it out, yeah, that is what I do. I say “SHTREET” for “street.” To me, it’s weird to try to pronounce that as a pure “str” cluster, and “shtr” sounds much easier and more natural to me. I don’t notice that I do it. I certainly don’t do it on purpose. And yet it’s there. It’s not a matter of perception or relativism or prescriptivism or anything like that. It is unambiguously there, even though I don’t notice it or make a conscious effort to produce it. I don’t understand how this is a matter of perception. The sound is there. Intent has nothing to do with it.
