Rarity of the (post)alveolar/retroflex approximant

[Grimalkin]

So /ɹ/ is pretty rare across the world's languages. As far as I know, it's only found phonemically in English, Armenian, Faeroese and Chukchi, and doesn't occur allophonically in many languages. I was wondering if any of you know a reason why it's so rare -- you'd think, being an approximant, it would be rather more common than it is. I mean, even [β̞] is considerably more common, though it's not phonemic in many languages.

Any thoughts?

[Soap]

/ɹ/ is one of the last sounds learned by English-speaking children, and one of the most frequently dropped in various dialects (nonrhoticism), so it may be that there's something about it that makes it hard to acquire and easy to lose. However I do believe /ɹ/ is quite common in Australian Aboriginal languages, as well as many languages of India, unless it's some other form of "r" that is only similar.

Edit: I guess you're meaning to constrast this with /ɻ/, a retroflex approximant. I've never understood the difference myself, but I guess the "r" in my dialect is clearly retroflex since I can't seem to make any r-like sound that isn't made with a "curled up" tongue.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

As far as I know, it's only found phonemically in English, Armenian, Faeroese and Chukchi, and doesn't occur allophonically in many languages.

Phonemically contrastive with what? It's one of the most common allophones of /r/ in Swedish, in free (dialectal) variation with [4, r, R, R\] and perhaps a few others. Though the Swedish approximant usually has more friction than the English one, and is quite often realized as a fricative.

[Grimalkin]

/ɹ/ is one of the last sounds learned by English-speaking children, and one of the most frequently dropped in various dialects (nonrhoticism), so it may be that there's something about it that makes it hard to acquire and easy to lose.

Yep, that's true, though it's interesting that /ɹ/ or [ɹ] aren't very commonly produced through lenition, in the same way that approximant [β] and [ɣ] are. I thought at first it might be something to do with it being a rhotic? But then again, /ɾ/ is a rhotic, and happens to be very common, especially as an allophone of another alveolar sound.

However I do believe /ɹ/ is quite common in Australian Aboriginal languages, as well as many languages of India, unless it's some other form of "r" that is only similar.

Possibly. I can't find any examples though (edit: You're right about Australian Ab langs...just found out Warlpiri has /ɻ/)

Edit: I guess you're meaning to constrast this with /ɻ/, a retroflex approximant. I've never understood the difference myself, but I guess the "r" in my dialect is clearly retroflex since I can't seem to make any r-like sound that isn't made with a "curled up" tongue.

Hmm, yeah, I'm lumping them together which is a bit ambiguous, but none of the alveolar/postalveolar/retroflex approximants are common cross-linguistically.

Phonemically contrastive with what? It's one of the most common allophones of /r/ in Swedish, in free (dialectal) variation with [4, r, R, R\] and perhaps a few others. Though the Swedish approximant usually has more friction than the English one, and is quite often realized as a fricative.

Well, it is found as an allophone or free variant of another rhotic in a few languages - eg Dutch. Thanks for the Swedish example though, I wasn't aware of that.

Ninja edit: Wikipedia 5 languages besides (American) English where the retroflex approximant occurs, including Mandarin. I assume it's phonemic in those languages. No doubt there are more langs that Wikipedia left out, but it still doesn't appear to be frightfully common.

[AnTeallach]

Ninja edit: Wikipedia 5 languages besides (American) English where the retroflex approximant occurs, including Mandarin. I assume it's phonemic in those languages. No doubt there are more langs that Wikipedia left out, but it still doesn't appear to be frightfully common.

UPSID lists 17 languages (3.77% of its sample), mostly Australian: http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/S/S0763.html

Also 11 for "alveolar" and 2 for "denti-alveolar", including voiced and voiceless in Yupik. These presumably don't include cases where the sounds are allophonic (and of course don't include languages which aren't in UPSID's sample - like English).

[Niedokonany]

Maybe because it's less distinct acoustically than [r]/[4]/etc., or sth. But for some reason I'd say [r\] > [R\] > [r], in terms of articulatory facility; it's likely that my linguistic ancestors disagreed.

It seems there's relatively many people here who don't pronounce the Polish sound "r" (which BTW tends to be closer to [4] than [r] in normal speech) in the standard manner, and [r\] is what some of them may substitute for it.

[Tropylium]

[ɹ] is difficult to keep apart from [l] on one hand, [z] on the other, and on the left leg, zero. The best way to keep a firm contrast to all three of those is to rather use a vibrant (tap or flap) rhotic. English has opted for velarization, or more to the point, velarization has facilitated a loss of trilledness (velarization existed even in Old English which, per Scots etc, still had [r]). Also, "bunched r" is what we get when the velarization takes over altogether.

The distinction versus zero may be the most important as pretty much every language in Australia has /r ɻ/; a contrast versus laterals should be equally difficult at both POAs, and sibilants do not exist in Australia.
(Many also have /ɽ/ but that's neither here nor there.)

[Soap]

/ɻ/ is in Mapuche, and probably several closely related but less-spoken languages as well.

Source: http://enwp.org/Mapudungun

[Xephyr]

However I do believe /ɹ/ is quite common in Australian Aboriginal languages, as well as many languages of India, unless it's some other form of "r" that is only similar.

Possibly. I can't find any examples though (edit: You're right about Australian Ab langs...just found out Warlpiri has /ɻ/)

Re the Indian languages, it's usually listed as the lateral ḷ but it's very often rhotic [ɻ]. I have no idea when and where-- whether it's language-, dialect-, or phonetically-conditioned. But it's usually not called ṛ or a rhotic, which is probably why it didn't show up on your radar.

[TaylorS]

I swear I remember reading somewhere that Sanskrit is thought to have had [ɻ] as a syllabic allophone of /r/ in words like "krshna" and "Rg Veda"

[ɹ] is difficult to keep apart from [l] on one hand, [z] on the other, and on the left leg, zero. The best way to keep a firm contrast to all three of those is to rather use a vibrant (tap or flap) rhotic. English has opted for velarization, or more to the point, velarization has facilitated a loss of trilledness (velarization existed even in Old English which, per Scots etc, still had [r]). Also, "bunched r" is what we get when the velarization takes over altogether.

The distinction versus zero may be the most important as pretty much every language in Australia has /r ɻ/; a contrast versus laterals should be equally difficult at both POAs, and sibilants do not exist in Australia.
(Many also have /ɽ/ but that's neither here nor there.)

According to John Well's Phonetic Blog [ɹ] is often pharyngealized in the Midwest and parts of the South, the phenomenon being strongest in the southern plains region (Texas, Oklahoma, etc.) I suspect this developed to maintain distinction from /l/, which is velarized is all contexts in American English.

[Soap]

Yeah, I believe Sanskrit had [ɻ] as well, and was going to add it to the Wikipedia article, but decided not to for some reason I don't remember. There's professional scholars saying it, but I think it's not quite 100% agreement, since after all the language died out 3000 years ago and we're just making educated guesses.

I figured out how to pronounce [ɹ] last night, .. I figured it's basically just [ž] without quite as close a contact with the tongue. I still am more comfortable with [ɻ] though.

[Skomakar'n]

As far as I know, it's only found phonemically in English, Armenian, Faeroese and Chukchi, and doesn't occur allophonically in many languages.

Phonemically contrastive with what? It's one of the most common allophones of /r/ in Swedish, in free (dialectal) variation with [4, r, R, R\] and perhaps a few others. Though the Swedish approximant usually has more friction than the English one, and is quite often realized as a fricative.

Is it really used anywhere else than in the Stockholm area and the most nearby areas? I've only ever heard it used by people from Stockholm, Solna, Täby and those areas.
I've always thought of it as having a very strong connection to Stockholm and its suburbs, and as a very odd, little peculiarity in Swedish, unique to that area. Have I been wrong?

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Is it really used anywhere else than in the Stockholm area and the most nearby areas? I've only ever heard it used by people from Stockholm, Solna, Täby and those areas.
I've always thought of it as having a very strong connection to Stockholm and its suburbs, and as a very odd, little peculiarity in Swedish, unique to that area. Have I been wrong?

Perhaps it's only used in the Stockholm area, but it's definitely not a very odd little peculiarity here. Nor probably elsewhere either, you should listen more closely to how they pronounce it on TV.

Even if it's only used in Stockholm, that's still a significant portion of the Swedish population.

[Grimalkin]

Thanks for all the replies guys It seems coronal approximants aren't quite as rare as I thought they were, but I think it definitely holds true that rhotic approximants seem to be much rarer than semivowels, even though approximants are supposed to be easy to articulate. Azulene, I like your point about [ɹ] being phonetically similar to both [l] and [z], which probably makes it rather unstable. Coda-[ɹ] especially seems to be susceptible to change (eg non rhotic dialects in english) because it's usually velarised/pharyngealised. So yeah, even with all these examples, you can safely say that coronal approximants are definitely not among the most common consonants, which implies they're pretty unstable.

[Hwunitum]

I believe Tamil and Malayalam contain this, also (Dravidian languages).

[Cathbad]

Thanks for all the replies guys It seems coronal approximants aren't quite as rare as I thought they were, but I think it definitely holds true that rhotic approximants seem to be much rarer than semivowels, even though approximants are supposed to be easy to articulate. Azulene, I like your point about [ɹ] being phonetically similar to both [l] and [z], which probably makes it rather unstable. Coda-[ɹ] especially seems to be susceptible to change (eg non rhotic dialects in english) because it's usually velarised/pharyngealised. So yeah, even with all these examples, you can safely say that coronal approximants are definitely not among the most common consonants, which implies they're pretty unstable.

How many languages do you know that have more than 1 phonemic rhotic? Except for German, all languages which I am slightly familiar with (Slovene, Turkish, Arabic, English) feature a variety of pronunciations of their rhotic, ranging from a "roll" to a tap to, indeed, an approximant. I don't think lists of phonemes should be trusted at all regarding this. Retroflexes, of course, are another matter, but even here, I would guess that there is a lot of allophony, especially in languages with a full retroflex series.

[dunomapuka]

All Albanian speakers I've heard have [ɹ] for the rhotic, or something similar. Also, a handful of Italian speakers, I think from some northern dialect.

[din]

(Old thread!)

Cathbad:
German has both [ʁ] and [ɐ] for the rhotic in certain dialects (like standard German), so they too have multiple pronunciations.

[Drydic]

[Hwunitum]

How many languages do you know that have more than 1 phonemic rhotic? Except for German, all languages which I am slightly familiar with (Slovene, Turkish, Arabic, English) feature a variety of pronunciations of their rhotic, ranging from a "roll" to a tap to, indeed, an approximant. I don't think lists of phonemes should be trusted at all regarding this. Retroflexes, of course, are another matter, but even here, I would guess that there is a lot of allophony, especially in languages with a full retroflex series.

Gaelic has 3 separate R sounds.

[finlay]

Having /ɾ/~/r/ is a feature common to most of the Iberian peninsula... and Albanian, I think.

Also, a lot of Dutch people have [ɾ] initially and [ɹ] in the coda.

[Nortaneous]

Having /ɾ/~/r/ is a feature common to most of the Iberian peninsula... and Albanian, I think.

/r/ can be analyzed as /ɾɾ/ in Iberian langs, but not Albanian.

[Ser]

/r/ can be analyzed as /ɾɾ/ in Iberian langs

Are you sure? In Spanish it'd end up as the only geminated consonant, which isn't good.

I'm also surprised nobody has mentioned the presence of the retroflex approximant in Mandarin.

[Grimalkin]

The retroflex approximant seems to be about as common as the alveolar approximant (I didn't know this at the time of making this thread, which was some time ago. I'm surprised it's been brought back from the dead after all this time )

Of course the retroflex approximant in Mandarin is sometimes realised as [ʐ] and it's unclear which one is the underlying phoneme. Though does it really matter...?

[Skomakar'n]

As far as I know, it's only found phonemically in English, Armenian, Faeroese and Chukchi, and doesn't occur allophonically in many languages.

Phonemically contrastive with what? It's one of the most common allophones of /r/ in Swedish, in free (dialectal) variation with [4, r, R, R\] and perhaps a few others. Though the Swedish approximant usually has more friction than the English one, and is quite often realized as a fricative.

It can't be one of the most common... Unless a very disproportional amount of Swedes live close enough to Stockholm, of course, but yeah; I seriously know nobody who isn't from the Stockholm area who ever pronounces it like that, allophonic or not, and I even know people who are from around there (and from Täby, interestingly enough, having lived there their whole lives, where most of the people I know don't even just have it as an allophone, but as their consistent pronunciation) who don't (okay, one, but she has lived there for her entire life, and her mother has a very stereotypical Stockholm dialect - her father is from Norrland, though). They all have very clear [r], or something guttural depending on where they're from (or both, if they're from certain areas of Västra Götaland), but never [ɹ]. This goes for all friends and teachers that I have ever had that are not from around Stockholm.

It is obviously common, since a lot of people live in Stockholm and surrounding areas, but counting dialects and regional variations rather than people, it can't be, can it..?