A preliminary ultrasound examination of Upper Sorbian rhotics

Upper Sorbian has been influenced tremendously by German, causing it to adopting the uvular rhotic. The current study examines the uvular rhotic and its palatalized counterpart in three vocalic environments (word initial, intervocalic, and word final) with the vowels /a, e, o, i/ using ultrasound. The preliminary results indicate a striking difference between the two phonemes. The plain uvular rhotic was characterized by a retracted and raised tongue dorsum, accompanied by a slightly retroflexed tongue tip. The retroflexed tongue tip is surprising for a uvular rhotic. It could be related to requirements for rhotic production or a remnant of the alveolar rhotic Upper Sorbian had historically. The environments with /i/ were especially striking: the uvular rhotic was palatalized intervocalically; the tongue body was raised near the palatal region, while the dorsum retracted strongly. In other word positions, the rhotic caused a lowering and retraction of /i/. The palatalized rhotic had a raised tongue body, ...