This study investigates some acoustic characteristics of Norwegian /ç/ and /[small Esh]/ as spoken by two groups of young people. Whereas the first group distinguished between the two fricatives in production, the other speakers showed articulatory merging, producing both /ç/ and /[small Esh]/ as [[small Esh]]. Parameters measured were duration and relative rms amplitude of the fricative and four spectral properties, viz. lower and upper edge and peak frequency, as well as centre of gravity. The results show that the two fricatives are mainly distinguished by their spectral properties. For younger speakers with a merged pronunciation, merging is not fully completed.

The set of vowel symbols introduced by Gimson in 1977 into the Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary for the representation of British pronunciation became so widely used that for two decades an unprecedented harmony reigned and an ever wider non-specialist audience became accustomed to accept that pronunciations should be presented to them via the International Phonetic Alphabet in this form. This unity was disrupted by the publication by one branch of the Oxford University Press of important reference books in which one in four of the Gimson twenty vowel-phoneme symbols were changed. The grounds for welcoming or deprecating each of these changes are discussed.

This paper reports how stress and the position of the /ns/ cluster in polysyllabic words affect [t] epenthesis in four different environments: (1) word-medial after a stressed vowel (e.g. 'cen.sus vs. 'dentsus); (2) word-final after a stressed vowel (e.g. in.'tense vs. in'tents); (3) word-medial after a stressless vowel (e.g. con.'sent vs. blunt 'say.ing); and (4) word-final after a stressless vowel (e.g. 'sci.ence vs. 'con.tents). Analysis of stop closure durations in experimental sentences read by seven American English speakers reveals that position, not stress, is the most important factor in [t] epenthesis: final position (e.g. science and intense) favors epenthesis. Stress is found to have an effect on stop closure durations in the way it interacted with word-position – i.e. for the final /ns/ cluster, stress immediately before it disfavors epenthesis (e.g. intense). The underlying /t/ is shown to be not significantly longer than the epenthetic [t]. Measurements from polysyllabic words in the TIMIT corpus corroborate the experimental results that word-final position favors epenthesis and that stress does not correlate with epenthesis. In the TIMIT data, however, underlying /t/ was significantly longer than epenthetic [t].

The influence of consonant aspiration on the F0 contours of tones in Mandarin Chinese was tested in continuous speech by reference to a minimal pair of syllables, /ta/ and /tha/, which differ only in terms of aspiration. It was found that, consonant aspiration affects the fundamental frequency (F0) of the following vowel. The onset F0 of a tone is higher following unaspirated consonants than following aspirated consonants, and the magnitude of the differences are related to the tone itself as well as the preceding tone. The underlying mechanisms of this effect, as well as its interaction with other effects on F0 contours, are discussed.

This paper examines the phonetic typology of pharyngeal sounds and presents external articulatory evidence for the phonological shift from uvular ejectives to pharyngeals in the Nootka dialects of Nuuchahnulth, based on the theory of the function of the aryepiglottic laryngeal sphincter mechanism. The phonetic structure of postvelar sounds is evaluated laryngoscopically in Wakashan and in Salish (cross-linguistically) to explain the historical phonological change through articulatory data. The physiological evidence suggests that uvulars may acquire phonetic characteristics of pharyngeals by adding an extra gesture to an existing sound. We conclude that postvelars can increase in complexity incrementally and that the complex pharyngeals of Wakashan and Salish can be explained through an articulatory phonetic hierarchy. The evolution of epiglottal components in each of the two phonologies is accounted for by the adaptation of existing glottal and pharyngeal elements. Implications for phonology are that features such as [RTR] and nodes such as pharyngeal can be attributed to the action of the laryngeal sphincter mechanism.

In this paper we examine the realization of accentual prominence in downstep contexts (i.e. after another accented word) in the Northern Bizkaian Basque dialect of Lekeitio. Previous work has suggested that pitch is the primary correlate of accent in this language. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that in contexts where pitch differences are likely to be reduced or perhaps eliminated, duration will be recruited to convey accentual prominence. The results show that pitch-accents are reduced but not eliminated following other accents, including the context after a word with narrow focus. The reduced pitch excursions found in this context appear to reliably and consistently indicate the position of the accent. On the other hand, the participants in this study did not consistently employ duration to enhance the prominence of accented syllables (a durational effect was found for two out of five speakers). Given the robustness of the pitch cue in this language (always a fall from the accented syllable), even in contexts of downstep, other phonetic correlates of accent will be redundant, to the extent that they are used.

This article is an account of the intonation of a variety of Welsh English. The layman's perception of a South Wales ‘Valleys’ accent is that, along with many other Welsh accents of English, it has a highly tuneful intonation which is distinct from that in any other part of the British Isles. The article sets out to describe the phonetic features of the main intonational forms that contribute towards this ‘melody’. This is done with the aid of a modified ToBI transcription system and supporting acoustic readings, which together enable reference to both pitch movements and pitch levels at any point in the overall ‘tune’ of an intonational phrase. Most of the distinctive melody-forming features of the dialect are found to be connected with the different kinds of accent-contour occurring at non-final and final (‘nuclear’) accents, and the phonetic realisations of these accent-contours. Finally, some discussion takes place on what may be general discourse meanings associated with the different intonational forms described in the dialect.

Spanish is by far the most widely spoken Romance language, used by about 350 million people mainly in the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America. The language variety described below is formal Spanish spoken in Castile (Central Spain) by educated middle-aged speakers.

Yiddish is, since Max Weinreich's fundamental work (Weinreich 1973, 1980), referred to as a fusion language in which components of different languages form a comprehensive synthesis. As Yiddish arose in early Ashkenazic communities in German speaking territories from the 10th century onwards, German contributes the most to its component multiplicity. From the start, some Hebrew-Aramaic and Romance elements inherited from the pre-German period were incorporated in the Yiddish language and remained along with the Hebrew script – though Yiddish to this day clearly bears the marks of its genetic origin as a West-Germanic language. The migration of a large number of Jews to Eastern Europe after the pogroms of the 13th and 14th centuries gave way to an enormous influence of the Slavic speaking environment on the rising Eastern Yiddish (as opposed to Western Yiddish, being the variety of the language that was retained on German speaking territory) and hence added a fourth component. In response to the emancipation, Yiddish lost ground in the Western sphere and substantially disappeared in Germany at the end of the 18th century, whereas in Eastern Europe, the number of Yiddish speakers increased rapidly, and gradually the language became regionally differentiated. The pre-war Eastern Yiddish speaking territory may be divided as follows: Northeastern Yiddish (Lithuania, Latvia and Belorussia), Southeastern Yiddish (Ukraine, Rumania and Eastern Galicia) and Central Yiddish (Poland and Western Galicia). The great migratory movements at the turn of the century spread the Yiddish language to the far corners of the earth, with several vernaculars being the source of a fifth component. The persecutions and the genocide through the Nazi-regime led to the annihilation of a vast number of Yiddish speakers, all but completely destroying the language in its historical territory and giving proportionally more importance to the rapidly evolving varieties of the new emigration countries.

Tyneside English (TE) is spoken in Newcastle upon Tyne, a city of around 260,000 inhabitants in the far north of England, and in the conurbation stretching east and south of Newcastle along the valley of the River Tyne as far as the North Sea. The total population of this conurbation, which also subsumes Gateshead, Jarrow, North and South Shields, Whitley Bay, and Tynemouth, exceeds 800,000. The transcription is based on the speech of a 24-year old speaker who has lived all of her life in the Tyneside area, mostly in the Walker area of Newcastle. It should be noted that there is considerable phonetic variation in TE as a function of speaker age, sex and socioeconomic class, such that some of the features discussed in this illustration do not apply to the speaker in question; conversely, the speaker uses certain pronunciations which are not necessarily representative of the TE-speaking community as a whole (see Docherty & Foulkes 1999, Watt & Milroy 1999, Watt 2000).

In March 2003, ten additional members of the new Council of the International Phonetic Association were elected. They are: Nina Grønnum, Michael K.C. MacMahon, Janet Fletcher, Katerina Nicolaidis, Didier Demolin, Olle Engstrand, Asher Laufer, Eric Zee, Shizuo Hiki and Vincent J. van Heuven.