sidrn

R The symbol used to represent the coronality element. Sounds made by raising the tip/blade of the tongue contain this element.
Raddoppiamento sintattico Italian: [raddoppjaˈmento sinˈtattiko] In English: syntactic doubling. A feature of Central and Southern varieties of Italian which involves the gemination of word-initial consonants. This is triggered by the characteristics of the preceding word. The triggers are a rather disparate set, but include words stressed on the final syllable and some, but not all, monosyllables. A couple of examples: città bella [tʃitˈta ˈbbella] ("beautiful city"), da Carlo [da ˈkkaɾlo] ("at Carlo's place"). The geminate consonant is not normally recorded in the standard orthography, except in a small number of forms where a phrase has been lexicalised into a single word. For example, chissà = chi + sà = "who knows?" = "goodness knows".
Raising The replacement of a vowel by closer vowel. An example: Early Modern English meat had the vowel [eː]. This has been raised to [iː] in later stages of the language in most accents.
Rank of stricture See manner of articulation.
Received pronunciation Usually abbreviated to RP. An accent of British English. RP has been thought to be a high prestige accent, though less so in recent times. It is the accent which is most frequently used as a model for teaching English as a second or foreign language.
Recruitment A hearing disorder, often a feature of sensorineural hearing loss. Sufferers experience sudden increases in perceived loudness with only small increases in the intensity of a signal.
Reduced vowel See vowel reduction. The term is also sometimes used as a synonym for schwa.
Reduplication A morphological device which involves the copying of the whole or part of a word. Reduplication is used for a wide variety of purposes. Some examples:
- verb tense Ancient Greek λύω [ˈluo] - λέλυκα [ˈleluka], I free - I have freed
- emphasis Modern Standard Chinese 小小的 [ɕjáuɕjǎudə], very small
- diminutives Māori [ˈweɾa] - [ˈweɾaˈweɾa] hot - warm
Regressive assimilation See assimilation
Release The stage in the production of a plosive sound when the articulators part and the compressed air is released
Release masking A feature of the production of plosives in some languages, particularly English. The release of a plosive is made inaudible because it occurs during the closure of a following consonant. An example: the [k] in the word act.
Rendaku [renˈdækuː] A phonological process in Japanese. The first consonant of the second element of a compound word is changed from voiceless to voiced. An example is the well-known Japanese word origami (paper folding). The elements of this compound are ori (fold) and kami (paper). The process has many exceptions and is subject to many conditions. The most general constraint on the operation of rendaku is known as Lyman's law. If the second element of a compound contains a voiced obstruent, then rendaku does not apply.
Resolvability A consonant cluster is said to be resolvable if, and only if, all sub-sequences of consonants it contains are also legal clusters in the language concerned. For example, the English coda cluster /ksts/ as in texts is resolvable, because /kst/, /sts/, /ks/, /st/ and /ts/ are all legal coda clusters in English.
Resonance (1) The vibratory response of an acoustic system to input energy. (2) An area of high intensity in the spectrum of a sound.
Resonant See manner of articulation.
Retracted Produced slightly further back in the vocal tract. For example the first consonant in the English word train is articulated towards the rear of the alveolar ridge, further back than the intial consonant in the word take, so train=[t̰ɹeɪn].
Retroflex [ˈretrəfleks] Also called apico-palatal. The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is the tongue tip and the passive articulator is the front of the hard palate. [ʈ ɳ ʂ] are examples of retroflex sounds.
Reverse click A sound made with an egressive velaric airstream. For example, [↑ʘ] is a voiceless bilabial reverse click.
Reynold's number See airflow
Rhotic [ˈrəʊtɪk] The name applied to those accents of English where the /r/ phoneme may appear pre-pausally and pre-consonantally as well as pre-vocalically. Many American accents are rhotic, as are Scottish, Irish and Western English accents. However, it is clear that the occurrence of /r/ is more complicated than a binary classification of accents into rhotic and non-rhotic varieties would suggest. Even an accent like RP (General British), which is supposedly non-rhotic, allows pre-consonantal /r/ on occasion. One example is the word ferrule [ˈferjuːl]. One solution to this is to label accents as being of high, medium, or low rhoticity [rəʊˈtɪsəti].
Rhyme A subcomponent of the syllable. The rhyme consists of the nucleus (usually a vowel) and a following coda (zero or more consonants). For example, the sequence [aɪm] is the rhyme of the syllable [raɪm].
Rhythmic clipping The reduction of the duration of a vowel, sonorant consonant, or sequence of sonorant sounds occasioned by rhythmic factors. An example is the difference in the duration of vowel in the syllable mat when it occurs in a foot without accompanying unstressed syllables, compared to, say, its duration when it occurs with following unstressed syllables, as in a word such as matador. Informal measurements suggest that the duration of the vowel in the latter is less than 50% of the duration of the vowel in the former.
Rim The side of the tongue.
Rising diphthong A diphthong where the target quality has more prominence than the initial quality.
Roll The same as trill.
Round The name of a binary feature, often abbreviated to ro. [+round] sounds are produced with rounded and protruded lips. Examples of [+round] sounds are [y ɔ w].
Rounded Produced with lip rounding.
RP Abbreviation for Received Pronunciation