The labial flap is a speech sound which has received little attention in the literature. In this paper, we document the articulation of the sound, including audio and video data from Mono (D.R. Congo, Ubangian). The sound is attested in over sixty languages and has been incorporated into the phonological system of at least a dozen of them. The sound is easily describable in terms of values of phonological features or phonetic parameters, and it appears to have arisen independently in at least two regions of the world. These factors argue for the inclusion of the sound in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

This paper reports the results of an experiment on the effects of six speaking styles on some of the acoustic properties of speech. The experiment was part of an exploration of within-speaker variation in connection with automatic speaker verification (ASV), pursuing the hypothesis that the elicitation of style variation in the training phase of an ASV system (‘structured training’) would enhance the performance of the system. Swedish-speaking subjects produced a digit sequence at varying speaking rates and loudness levels, and also with simulated denasality (pinched nose) and under cognitive stress. Duration of vowels and consonants, and formant frequencies of vowels, were measured. A number of consistent patterns of variation emerged for duration and vowel quality and are reported here. The discussion explores the relation between the patterns observed and the success, or in the case of speech under stress the failure, of structured training in reducing the error rates in ASV.

The Dravidian language Malayalam has stops and nasals in seven places of articulation, but what is meant by a ‘place of articulation’ is not clear. Palatograms and linguograms, with simultaneous audio recordings, were taken of nine speakers and eight test words illustrating the four coronal stops and nasals in word-medial position. Results show that reference must be made to both the upper and lower articulators in describing the articulation of these consonants. Some of the contrasts are made solely on the basis of place of articulation on the upper articulator (e.g. dental vs. alveolar for some speakers) and others only on the basis of apicality (e.g. alveolar vs. palatoalveolar, both of which are articulated on the alveolar ridge for most speakers, but differ in the tongue contact). Other articulations (such as retroflex) remain maximally distinct by utilizing both parameters. Acoustic results give further evidence of overall tongue shape differences between these four segments.

This paper examines double articulations in three African languages, Mamvu, Lese and Efe, all belonging to the Central Sudanic language family. The phonetic inventory of these languages exhibits some very interesting facts, among which the most striking are voiceless labial velar stops with double bursts, and a labial uvular stop which shows the combination of a voiceless and a voiced part in the same consonant. Acoustic and aerodynamic measurements describing the production of these sounds are presented.

Maastricht (Mosae Trajectum in Roman times) is the capital of the Dutch province of Limburg and one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. Situated in the extreme south, close to the Belgian border, the city is fairly small, with a population of just over 120,000. Maastricht enjoys a world-wide reputation as the place where the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992. The dialect of Maastricht belongs to the south-eastern dialect group (Weijnen 1966: §§ 166, 173), which shares a number of properties with dialects in Belgium and Germany. A more recent classification (Belemans, Kruijsen & van Keymeulen 1998) assigns the dialect to Central Limburgian, which comprises seven subgroups in the Netherlands and Belgium, more particularly to Trichterlands. Two earlier descriptions are Houben (1905), which is historically oriented, and van Buuren (1991).

Modem Greek is a descendant of Classical Greek and is spoken today by approximately 11,000,000 people living in Greece. In addition, it is spoken (with various modifications) in large Greek immigrant communities in North America, Australia and elsewhere. Although the Modern Greek dialects had largely been shaped by the 10th c. A.D. (Browning 1983), the linguistic situation in Greece has been one of diglossia from the middle 19th c. (the early beginnings of the independent Greek state) and until 1976. The High and Low varieties of Greek diglossia are known as Katharevousa and Dhimotiki respectively. Katharevousa was a purist, partly invented, variety that was heavily influenced by Classical Greek; the term Dhimotiki, on the other hand, loosely describes the mother tongue of the Greeks, which was confined to oral communication. In 1976 the use of Katharevousa was officially abolished and gradually a new standard based on Dhimotiki as spoken in Athens has emerged. This variety is adopted by an increasingly large number of educated speakers all over Greece, who choose it over regional varieties (Mackridge 1985). In spelling, Modern Greek has kept many of the conventions of Ancient Greek, although several simplifications have taken place since 1976. Perhaps the most dramatic of these has been the decision to stop using accent and breath marks (which have not had phonetic correspondents in the language for nearly 2,000 years); these marks were replaced by one accent on the stressed vowel of each word with two or more syllables. The variety described here is Standard Modern Greek as spoken by Athenians. The sample text in particular is based on recordings of two Athenian speakers, a male in his mid-twenties and a female in her mid-thirties. Both speakers read the passage twice in relatively informal style.

Cypriot Greek is the dialect of Modern Greek spoken on the island of Cyprus by approximately 650,000 people and also by the substantial immigrant communities of Cypriots in the UK, North America, Australia, South Africa and elsewhere. Due to lengthy isolation, Cypriot Greek is so distinct from Standard Greek as to be often unintelligible to speakers of the Standard. Greek Cypriot speakers, on the other hand, have considerably less difficulty understanding Greeks, since Standard Greek is the official language of Cyprus, and as such it is the medium of education and the language of the Cypriot media. However, in every day situations Cypriot Greek is the only variety used among Cypriots. Cypriot Greek is not homogeneous but exhibits considerable geographical variation (Newton 1972). The variety described here is that used by educated speakers, particularly the inhabitants of the capital, Nicosia. Although influenced by increasing contact with Standard Greek, Cypriot Greek retains most of its phonological and phonetic characteristics virtually intact. There is no established orthography for Cypriot Greek; however, certain, rather variable, conventions have emerged, based on Greek historical orthography but also including novel combinations of letters in order to represent sounds that do not exist in the Standard (e.g. σι for [∫]); a version of these conventions has been adopted here for the sample text. The transcription is based on the speech of an educated male speaker from Nicosia in his mid-thirties, who read the text twice at normal speed and in an informal manner, he also assisted in rendering the text from Standard to Cypriot Greek.

The Kunama are a people of western Eritrea. Kunama (/ku1naa23ma2/) is their selfname, and they call their language /ku1naa23ma1 au23ra2/ or /ki1naa23ma1 ɲeel23a2/ but this is usually referred to by Western scholars simply as ‘Kunama’. It is a language of the Nilo-Saharan phylum, though its family affiliations within that phylum are still a matter of debate; cf. Bender 1989; Ehret 1989. Overall, Kunama has approximately 100,000 speakers. It comprises seven lects (John Abraha Ashkaba 1999), the most widely known of which are Barka (/ba2ka2/) and Marda (/mar2da32/). The present work is based on the latter, though the differences between these two lects is not very great.