35
People around world associate rolled R with a jagged line, study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
Welcome to the community about the science of human Language!
Everyone is welcome here: from laypeople to professionals, Historical linguists to discourse analysts, structuralists to generativists.
Rules:
Related communities:
Resources:
Grammar Watch - contains descriptions of the grammars of multiple languages, from the whole world.
I’m guessing it’s to do with the perturbed waveform. Someone should do a followup study to see whether any other sounds with similar characteristics(i.e. an idling car engine, a TR-808 drum machine handclap) would have similar associations.
I think that this is most likely the case:
In the audio for this spectrogram I've pronounced [rä arä lä älä]. Even with all background noise, it's obvious how smoother the [l] is in comparison with [r] - in one you're simply redirecting the airflow laterally, in another you're "turning" it on and off, by hitting the alveolar ridge with the tongue.