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_Konstanz.ppt

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), (…)

1. What is a “liquid“ ?• → for example <l> in

– “leaf”, “meal”– “Liebe”, “viel”

• → for example <r> in– “read”, “cure”– “Ring”, “Kur”

• What about <y>, <wh>, as in“yes”, “what”, (…) ?

– Consonants ?– Sonorant ?– Non-nasal ?

• In fact, these sounds are sometimes subsumed under ‘liquids’ (cf. Maddieson 1984). But unlike <l> and <r>, they are characterized by a continuous change in sound quality → ‘glides’

• So, liquids = non-nasal, sonorant, sustained consonants

Ramers (2001), following the SPE(Chomsky & Halle 1968)

<l> and <r> (= rhotics)

1. What is a “liquid“ ?• Often supported by phonotactic

argument → Liquids can fill finalposition in syllable-initial consonantclusters.

– 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 flowof the air through the vocal tract.

<l> and <r> (= rhotics)

Ramers (2001), following the SPE(Chomsky & Halle 1968)

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 Germanand 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)

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 strongconstriction of the oral cavityin the velar region (soft palate)

– → secondary articulation– Results in a ‘darker’ sound quality

(syllable-final, after vowel, syllabic)

2. Production of liquids• Laterals [] and [] and vowels [i] and [u]

[] and [i] have similarsound qualities

Compared with [], [] is morerelated (but not as similar) to [u]

2. Production of liquids• Laterals [] and [] and vowels [i] and [u]

Formant frequencies (English)

[i] F1 270 [] F1 360

F2 2.290 F2 1.800

F3 3.010 F3 2.900

Peterson & Barney (1952) Duenas (2001)

[u] F1 570 [] F1 400

F2 840 F2 1.200

F3 2.410 F3 2.400

Peterson & Barney (1952) Narayanan et al. (1997)

2. Production of liquids• Rhotics

– Lindau (1985:162): “the search for a single phonetic characteristic which defines rhotics as a class has met little success”

– Kohler (1995:153) 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 (1996:245): “The overall unity of rhotic segments relies on historical connections between subgroups of rhotics and on the choice of the letter <r> 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

2. Production of liquids• Rhotics

– Alveolar approximant [] in SSBE Retroflex approximant [] in AE

/r/

Central approximation of thealveolar ridge by tongue tip orblade without causing friction

or a complete closure

Underside of the tip or bladeapproximates (post-)alveolar

region of the hard palate

Syllable-initial and –finalnext to the vowel, as in

“red”, “bread”, “here”, “earn”

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-aerodynamicprinciples 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)

r

[rof] (‘roar‘)

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])

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).

Formant frequencies (German)

[a] F1 690 [] F1 550

F2 1.300 F2 1.100

F3 2.850 F3 2.250

Möbius (2001) Myself (cf. Niebuhr 2004)

3. Liquids in the speech code• Most of the world’s languages use laterals (ca. 80%) and rhotics (> 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/– /oka/ (‘spoon’) vs. /oka/ (‘Alexis’ [Dim.])– /rovna/ (‘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, …

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)

[] [][] []

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!”

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)

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 thesyllable-final lateral [] (Hovarth & Hovarth 2002;Johnson & Britain 2007).

– A similar sound change removed thelateral in words / contexts like “palm”, “talk”, (…)in the 16th century.

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 spokencommunication (cf. Kohler 1995): “Has_ma”,“mip mir”, “ume petite”, “im my ow car”, (…)

– Follows the general tendency to avoid consonantalsyllable codas, i.e. change in CV direction

– Consonant articulations are weaker syllable-finallythan syllable-initially (cf. Sproat & Fujimura 1993)

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.

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 world’s 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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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

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