Open Access

Silke Hamann

• At the outset of this dissertation one might pose the question why retroflex consonants should still be of interest for phonetics and for phonological theory since ample work on this segmental class already exists. Bhat (1973) conducted a quite extensive study on retroflexion that treated the geographical spread of this class, some phonological processes its members can undergo, and the phonetic motivation for these processes. Furthermore, several phonological representations of retroflexes have been proposed in the framework of Feature Geometry, as in work by Sagey (1986), Pulleyblank (1989), Gnanadesikan (1993), and Clements (2001). Most recently, Steriade (1995, 2001) has discussed the perceptual cues of retroflexes and has argued that the distribution of these cues can account for the phonotactic restrictions on retroflexes and their assimilatory behaviour. Purely phonetically oriented studies such as Dixit (1990) and Simonsen, Moen & Cowen (2000) have shown the large articulatory variation that can be found for retroflexes and hint at the insufficiency of existing definitions.