The phonetics of Modern Hebrew rhotics

Abstract

This paper investigates manner variation of Israeli Hebrew rhotics with respect to two factors: prosodic position and speaker gender. An acoustic experimental study shows that although the Hebrew rhotic phoneme tends to be a dorsal approximant, it is significantly more likely to undergo fortition in onset position. This fortition is a result of target overshoot, the rhotic subsequently being produced with a greater degree of constriction than that which would have resulted in an approximant, subsequently surfacing as a stop, a fricative, a tap or a trill. Furthermore, in onset position, female speakers show more variation and produce fewer approximants than male speakers.