Central Catalan ‘prepalatal’ (postalveolar) consonants show a complex phonological distribution. Whereas in word-internal intervocalic position a four-way opposition obtains, involving a contrast in voice and a fricative/affricate distinction, elsewhere at least one of the two oppositions is neutralized. Position in word determines whether affrication and/or voicing is contrastive. We study the effect of this factor as well as other phonetic factors and style on the allophony of the voiced prepalatals in a large corpus of Central Catalan. The most significant conditioning factor turns out to be the preceding context, whereas position in word per se is not significant either for degree of constriction or for voicing. Thus, we do not find a direct effect of phonological contrastiveness on phonetic variation.

This study examined native language (L1) transfer effects on the production of second-language (L2) prosody by intermediate Greek learners of English, specifically the set of tonal events and their alignment, speech rate, pitch span and pitch level in English polar questions. Greek uses an L* L+H- L% melody giving rise to a low–high–low f0 contour at the end of the polar question that does not resemble any of the contours used by native speakers in English polar questions. The results showed that the Greek speakers transferred the full set of Greek tonal events into English associating them with stressed syllables, and consistently placed the focus on the verb. The Greek speakers also anchored the peak of the phrase accent in polar questions around the midpoint of the stressed vowel across L1/L2 despite using longer vowel durations in L2. At the same time, their productions deviated from L1 forms in terms of speech rate (slower in L2), pitch span (narrower in L2) and pitch level (lower in L2), indicating that even when learners adopt an L1 prosodic feature in their L2, they still produce interlanguage forms that deviate from L1.

Lakota (Siouan) has both contrastive and coarticulatory vowel nasality, and both nasal and oral vowels can occur before or after a nasal consonant. This study examines the timing and degree patterns of acoustic vowel nasality across contrastive and coarticulatory contexts in Lakota, based on data from six Lakota native speakers. There is clear evidence of both anticipatory and carryover nasal coarticulation across oral and nasal vowels, with a greater degree of carryover than anticipatory nasalization. Nasality in carryover contexts is nonetheless restricted: the oral–nasal contrast is neutralized for high back vowels in this context and realized for three of the six speakers in low vowels. In the absence of nasal consonant context, contrastive vowel nasalization is generally greatest late in the vowel. Low nasal vowels in carryover contexts parallel this pattern (despite the location of the nasal consonant before the vowel), and low nasal vowels in anticipatory contexts are most nasal at the start of the vowel. We relate the synchronic patterns of coarticulation in Lakota to both its system of contrast and diachronic processes in the evolution of nasality in Lakota. These data reflect that coarticulatory patterns, as well as contrastive patterns, are grammatical and controlled by speakers.

Shanghai Chinese (Shanghainese; 上海话) is a Wu dialect (ISO 639-3; code: wuu) spoken in the city of Shanghai (CN-31), one of the four municipalities in the People's Republic of China. Over the last century, the dialect has been heavily influenced by neighbouring dialects spoken in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, such as Jianghuai Mandarin (江淮官话), the Suzhou Wu dialect (吴语苏州话), and the Ningbo Wu dialect (吴语宁波话), in addition to two other, more distant dialects, Cantonese (广东话) and Northern Mandarin (北方官话). Most native speakers of Shanghai Chinese are in fact descendants of immigrants from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces who moved to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. More recently, the position of Shanghai Chinese has been eroded with the influx of immigrants from other parts of the country and the widespread adoption of Standard Chinese.

The development of Standard Austrian German (SAG; de-AT) is closely linked to the development of Standard German German (SGG; de-DE) as spoken in Northern Germany. Traditionally, SAG is strongly geared towards SGG norms. The orientation towards SGG norms goes back to at least 1750, when Maria Theresia ordered the adoption of the Upper Saxonian norms in place at that time (Ebner 1969, Wiesinger 1989). Since then, SAG pronunciation is modelled on SGG and Austrian newsreaders are instructed according to the norms of Duden's (2005) Aussprachewörterbuch and Siebs (1958, with an addendum for Austria) (Wächter-Kollpacher 1995, Soukup & Moosmüller 2011). This procedure leads to an inconsistent usage of SGG features in Austrian broadcasting media (Wiesinger 2009, Soukup & Moosmüller 2011, Hildenbrandt & Moosmüller 2015). Therefore, from a methodological point of view, pronunciation used in the Austrian broadcasting media is unsuitable for defining SAG (Moosmüller 2015).

Francoprovençal (known locally as patois) is the glottonym used as a cover term for a highly fragmented Romance dialect-grouping. These varieties are spoken in south-eastern France, and neighbouring parts of Switzerland and Italy; diasporic communities are also reported to maintain the use of Francoprovençal in Germany, Canada, and the United States (see Nagy 2011). Francoprovençal enjoys varying levels of official status across these regions. In France, for example, Francoprovençal was only recognised by the Ministry for Culture and Communication in 1999 as a ‘language of France’, but it does not constitute one of the handful of regional languages protected by law that are permitted in the education system. Conversely, in the Aosta Valley (Italy), which enjoys an autonomous status, Francoprovençal is protected under Federal law, and is taught in schools (see Josserand 2003).

The 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences was held in Glasgow, Scotland, on 10–14 August 2015. It was jointly organized by the University of Glasgow, Queen Margaret University, University of Strathclyde, and the University of Edinburgh. In total, 774 presentations covered a wide variety of topics in phonetic sciences. These included 4 plenary sessions, 10 discussant sessions where 40 papers plus 10 discussions were presented, and 720 papers in regular sessions consisting of 345 oral presentations and 375 poster presentations. Over the five days, 978 delegates attended the Congress, including co-authors and those who did not present a paper. Contributions came from 46 countries. Two hundred and twenty-nine reviewers took part in the double-blind review of the Congress papers. Eight satellite meetings were also held. The Association warmly thanks the organizers for all their work, and all who attended, together making the Congress a great success.

The minutes of the IPA General Meeting of 18 August 2011 in Hong Kong as published in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association vol. 41(3) were agreed on as being a correct record.

The Association has enjoyed a period of financial stability in which strong royalty income from JIPA has been coupled with efficiency savings driven by the Secretary and Treasurer. As a result we have had a surplus in each year, and our total assets have grown by more than 80% over four years. This is despite the continued decline in the value of the euro against sterling, which has reduced the real value of members’ subscriptions by around 15% over the same period.

Max Mangold, who died on 3 February 2015 aged 92, devoted his whole life to learning and describing languages and their pronunciation. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the IPA phonetician par excellence of the German-speaking world, adopting the system at an early age in preference to the established German transcription systems of the time, because it enabled him to acquire more efficiently the correct pronunciation of the many languages he studied. And many there were! Apart from those he could speak fluently – estimates vary between 10 and 20 in different reports – he studied the grammars of many more. His answer to a personal enquiry in 1992 as to how many languages he could speak was 15 – and a few weeks to polish up the other 15! He then circulated among the multi-national staff and students at the departmental summer barbecue, speaking to the Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Czech, Bulgarian, Greek, Spanish and Swedish guests in their respective native tongues. That was about three years after retiring from his position as professor of phonetics at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, where he had taught since 1957. He continued to offer transcription classes and a colloquium each semester until he was over 90.