The Phonetics and Phonology of Rhotic Consonants in Central Kurdish
摘要
This chapter investigates the Phonetics and Phonology of the rhotic consonants in Central Kurdish. It looks into the common phonetic features that put the trill and the flap into the rhotic group in CK. Further, the phonemic status of the rhotics is investigated: whether they are two distinct phonemes or allophones of the same phoneme. This study is the first of its kind to thoroughly explore the Rhotic consonants in CK. The Phonetic questions are answered by recording native speakers of the variety under study and then acoustically analyzing the data. No common phonetic or prosodic features are found between the trill and the flap. However, there is some evidence on the homogeneity of the rhotics in CK. Younger children and speakers with articulatory disorders modify both rhotics to alveolar lateral. Also, children in a later stage neutralize both rhotics to the flap. Another finding of the study is that the third formant of the rhotics in CK is noticeably high, whereas the third formant lowering is the unique formant feature for the rhotics reported in the literature. The data also demonstrates that the trill and the flap are in contrastive distribution.