Coarticulations and coronals in Malayalam.

• Author: McAlpin, David W.

Recently, in this journal, Murray Emeneau (1995) significantly clarified the phonological conditions required for palatalization in Tamil-Malayalam. Generally, initial k [greater than] c [tC] before a front vowel. This change was blocked by a retroflex consonant immediately following the front vowel in Tamil-Malayalam, but not in Telugu where the same change occurred independently and somewhat later.(1) This change was completed by the time of the earliest records in Old Tamil, about two thousand years ago, and has not operated in the historic philological record. Neighboring Kannada did not palatalize in this environment; loan words back and forth have produced numerous counter-examples. Emeneau demonstrated that this palatalization could also be blocked by a following alveolar in Tamil-Malayalam, but not in Telugu. In discussing problem cases, several instances occurred where Malayalam did not show the expected result and often had r/r doublets. While he was certain that shifts between alveolar /r/ and dental /r/ provided the explanation, Emeneau was unable to provide an underlying mechanism. On reading this, I realized that I had the explanation from my own research, which I had never previously considered important enough to elaborate on.

The phonology of Malayalam can only be described as a tour de force. It has successfully combined a very conservative Dravidian six-stop phonology with a conservative Sanskrit phonology; adding voicing, aspiration, and a complete set of Sanskritic sibilants, at least in educated styles. It has a near world-maximum contrast in nasals (m, n, n, n, n, n), six contrasting stop positions in deep phonology (labial, dental, alveolar, retroflex, palatoalveolar, and velar), to which two more are added in surface phonology (retroflex affricates and palatals). However, a critical problem, and the one relevant here, concerns the two contrasting taps, "dental" /r/ and alveolar /r/.(2) In terms of surface phonemics, they clearly contrast initially and intervocalically, while the contrast is neutralized finally and in consonant clusters. In deep phonology both taps exist as liquids, although at this level /r/ comes only from loanwords: e.g., rotti 'flat bread' from Urdu. The deep alveolar single stop joins /r/ when intervocalic. In terms of phonetics, three clear entities exist which are reflected in the script: a single tap r, a single tap r, and single (or double) tap r, which is the pronunciation used in the final position. The contrast is an active one and very important for Malayalam's over thirty-four million speakers, but the precise phonetic nature of the contrast was unclear to me at the time.

I trained as a phonologist in graduate school. Although my dissertation concerned other aspects of Malayalam, during my field work in Kerala I set out to resolve this issue. While the Malayalam I had learned in the United States equipped me with an acceptable contrast in slow speech, I still was not sure what that contrast really was. From my experience with Tamil and the instruction in Malayalam, I had a good framework on which to begin. I had learned that Malayalam's dental /n/ is strongly velarized. On the basis of that distinctive articulation, I knew that Malayalam had at least some coarticulations, which had not been considered usual in South India.(3) The alveolar tap /r/ seemed to be just that, a single quick tap on the alveolar ridge [r]. The final tap /r/ was a single (or double) tap on the alveolar ridge [r]. The more common /r/ was a single tap, slightly fronted on the alveolar ridge [r[less than]]. I was fairly certain that neither point of articulation nor manner of articulation was the contrastive element here. In slow speech both taps could be double. Careful examination revealed that /r/ was palatalized with no off-glide. Since the dental /n/ was already known to be velarized, and the retroflexed (or retracted) series could readily be analyzed as pharyngealized, Malayalam seemed to have coarticulation added as a feature to some of its phonemes. In these, the tongue body took vowel-like positions: i-like for palatalized, w-like (with no lip rounding) for velarized, and a-like for pharyngealized. The alveolar /r/ seemed pharyngealized, the common /r/ was palatalized, and the final, noncontrastive /r/ was neither.

I was able to develop this view considerably, basing myself on a remark in the Keralapaniniyam, one of the best of the traditional grammars of Malayalam. The aryyalipi script of Malayalam, while very good at handling these contrasts (much better than the IPA), uses two graphemes to indicate an r in a consonant cluster - one for before and one for after the stop. However, it does not indicate which r (/r/ or /r/) was present in the cluster. To clarify this, Rajaraja Varma analyzed in detail which r was present with which stops (1895 [1969: 106]).(4) What had started as an inquiry into differentiating two taps was turning out to reveal the organizing principle for the surface phonology.

The consonants of...