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habarakhe4 skrev:
How did French acquire the uvular [R]?
Nobody knows for quite sure. There is a continuous
[R] area in western Europe from Portugal to
southernmost Sweden, where [R] or [R\] spread at the
expense of (probably different varieties of) apical
/r/ during the last two or three centuries -- in
parts of southern Sweden the oldest generation still
had [r] or [4] at the beginning of the 20th century.
French may well be the area of origin for this
shift, since we know that in 18th century Paris some
speakers tended to merge what was probably [r\] with
/z/ -- _chaire > chaise_ being AFAIK the only word
where the change stuck. If so [R] would have spread
because it optimized the difference between /r/ and
/z/. As to where it "came from" it should be noted
that even in languages where apical /r/ is normal
there are isolated individuals who have exclusively
uvular realizations.
One notable fact about the spread of the [r] > [R]
change across dialects and languages of western
Europe is that it at first jumped from major town to
major town, skipping the countryside between them
and only later spreading secundarily from these
urban centers. Thus [R] may at one time have been
assiciated with urbanity and modernity, and perhaps
education. It was certainly no optimization of
phonetic distinction between phonemes in languages
which contrasted /X/ or /x/ -- or even /G/! -- from
/r/ before the change. Indeed the [r] > [R] change
may be what triggered the merger of /G/ into /x/ in
Dutch!
Another notable fact is that in the border areas
both north and south of the western European [R]
area dialect that distinguished [r] and [4] --
either as different phonemes or as long/short
realizations of /r/ in dialects which had a general
distinction between short and long consonants --
kept [4] but changed [r] > [R\] > [R]. Thus some
dialects of Occitan and Portuguese ended up with
distinctive /4/ and /R/ phonemes, while
Vestrogothian dialects of Sweden have an allophonic
rule whereby short postvocalic /r/ is realized as
[4] while word-initial, preconsonantal and long /r:/
is realized as [R].
An interesting further development is found in
Brazilian Portuguese where [R] > [X] > [h], with
zero as the logical next step. Also Danish and
South Swedish have coalescence of vowels and
following [R] similar to what happened to
postvocalic [r\] in some Englishes.
/BP 8^)> -- a Swede with [4] and [r\`] realizations.
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
"Maybe" is a strange word. When mum or dad says it
it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
means "no"!
(Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)