Descriptive reports of South Wales English indicate front rounded realizations of the nurse vowel (e.g. Wells 1982; Collins & Mees 1990; Mees & Collins 1999; Walters 1999, 2001). However, the specific phonetic properties of the vowel are not depicted uniformly in these studies. In addition, they have relied entirely on auditory descriptions, rather than instrumental measurements. The study presented here is the first to provide a systematic acoustic and articulatory investigation of the nurse vowel in South Wales English, and to explore its relationship to realizations of Standard Southern British English /ɜː/ and Standard German /øː/. The results indicate systematic differences between the three vowels, with the South Wales English vowel produced with an open rounded lip posture, yet the acoustic characteristics of an unrounded front vowel. Implications for the notion of ‘front-rounding’ are discussed.

Sahaptin is a Sahaptian language spoken in Washington and Oregon, U.S.A. Rigsby & Rude (1996) divide Sahaptin into three broad dialect areas: Northwest, Northeast, and Columbia River. This Illustration of the IPA reflects the Yakama (also spelled Yakima) subdialect (ykm) of Northwest Sahaptin. Sahaptin has fifty or fewer native speakers (Beavert & Jansen 2012). The second author is a native speaker of this dialect. Her voice is on the accompanying recordings.

Speech perception is of interest to linguists and psychologists alike. Psychologists seek for linguistic units to enable them to explain processes involved in speech; linguists try to establish what these units may be, whether distinctive features, phonemes, syllables, words or even larger units. Although the phoneme was for some time considered to be the most likely candidate, experimental evidence is increasingly pointing to some larger unit, particularly in view of the fact that no one-to-one acoustic correlation with the phoneme nor with distinctive features can be found (cf. Reddy, 1967: 336, Ladefoged, 1967: 146, Denes, 1963: 892). Furthermore, if the phoneme were to be the unit of perception, in any sort of processing involving matching a perceived pattern with one already stored, far too many operations would be involved because of the large size of vocabularies and large number of sentence types in a language; such processing would have to be too rapid to be feasible, bearing in mind the constraints of memory span. There is now more sympathy for the syllable or larger stretch as the unit of perception (e.g. Laver, 1970: 68, Maclay and Osgood, 1959, Ladefoged, 1959: 402), and there seems to be good evidence for the planning of speech to be in stretches longer than a word, e.g. Ladefoged's experiments with placing ‘dot’ at different parts of a sentence (Ladefoged, 1959).

Tianjin Mandarin is a member of the northern Mandarin Chinese family (ISO 693-3: [cmn]). It is spoken in the urban areas of the Tianjin Municipality (CN-12) in the People's Republic of China, which is about 120 kilometers to the southeast of Beijing. Existing studies on Tianjin Mandarin have focused mainly on its tonal aspects, especially its intriguing tone sandhi system, with few studies examining the segmental aspects (on tone, see e.g. Li & Liu 1985, Shi 1986, Liu 1993, Lu 1997, Wang & Jiang 1997, Chen 2000, Liu & Gao 2003, Ma 2005, Ma & Jia 2006, Zhang & Liu 2011, Li & Chen 2016; on segmental aspects, see e.g. Han 1993a, b; Wee, Yan & Chen 2005). As also noted in Wee et al. (2005), this is probably due to the similarity in segmental structures between Tianjin Mandarin and Standard Chinese, especially among speakers of the younger generation, and what differentiates the two Mandarin varieties is most notably their tonal systems. The aim of the present description is therefore to provide a systematic phonetic description of both segmental and tonal aspects of Tianjin Mandarin, with main focus on the tonal aspects.

This paper sets out from a global definition of phonetics as ‘the study of the spoken medium of language’ in the broadest sense, whose goal is the description, modelling and explanation of speech communication in the languages of the world. Within this overall scientific frame, three general perspectives are distinguished — ‘speech signal analysis’, ‘historical linguistics and sound change’, ‘phonetics of the languages of the world’ — under which a wide array of specific questions, including applications, e.g. in language teaching, speech therapy and speech technology, may be subsumed. The three perspectives are outlined individually and in relation to each other, also with regard to their separate historical developments in the study of language and speech. The modem integration of the three perspectives into the unified paradigm of ‘phonetic or experimental phonology’ is then illustrated with reference to recent research at some leading phonetics labs around the world. From this examination of past history and present-day state-of-the-art of what is considered to be the core paradigm for phonetic study, conclusions are drawn for future research and teaching on the basis of this paradigm. In the shaping of phonetics as a scientific discipline, a strong plea is put forward for scientific, explanatory integration rather than modular, taxonomic diversification of the subject.

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.

In the IPA chart which was the outcome of the IPA 1989 Kiel Convention, the glottal fricatives [h, ɦ] were included, as they were in previous charts. Unlike Kloster-Jensen (JIPA 1991: 42), I believe we were correct to leave [h, ɦ] as they were, in the space for glottal fricatives. In order to justify his belief that the [h] is not a glottal fricative, Kloster-Jensen recruits two good referees, Ladefoged (1962) and Brücke (1876). Other phoneticians also share the same belief, that the [h] is not a glottal fricative (for example, Pike 1943: 140, O'Connor 1973: 143–144), but many others do believe that [h] is really a glottal fricative. Here I want to give two good reasons why we should consider [h, ɦ] glottal fricatives, and leave them as they are in the IPA chart. The first reason is a general one, and is based on aerodynamic reasoning. The second is based on observations of productions of [h] in Hebrew, in Arabic and in Finnish.

The present article is a preliminary analysis and detailed phonetic description of a taped conversation (between friends) as an example of the everyday linguistic habits of a teenager from Stockport. When the recording was made, she was sixteen years old (August 1975); she is the granddaughter of the main informant for Lodge (1966). She attended a comprehensive school in Stockport. As an example of a more formal style the informant was asked to read a passage from a newspaper.

The question of whether to analyse the intonation of a particular language in terms of tune or tone has been extensively discussed for English; recent accounts include Gibbon (1976: 101–92), Ladd (1980: 14–16), Cruttenden (1986: 55–8) and Couper-Kuhlen (1986: 67–72). It cannot, for all that, be said to be resolved. When it comes to French, however, the question has scarcely been aired at all, although Crompton (1980) does discuss the related question of ‘configurations’ versus levels versus tonetic stress marks (the latter surely an unlikely candidate for annotating the intonation of a language without lexical stress).

This article provides an overview of IPA Braille, revised and updated by Englebretson (2008) under the auspices of the International Council on English Braille (ICEB). After a brief introduction to braille as a writing system and a review of the disparate braille notations formerly used for phonetics, the author discusses the need for a single, up-to-date, linguistically-informed braille notation for the IPA. The author then outlines the rationale and procedures used in developing IPA Braille, and presents an appendix of the complete charts showing the braille equivalents for all symbols of the current IPA (revised to 2005). This article is relevant to phoneticians interested in applications of the IPA, linguists interested in writing systems, instructors who may have blind students enrolled in phonetics and linguistics courses, and especially to blind students and professionals needing access to a complete, updated braille IPA notation. The publication of the full braille charts in JIPA ensures that IPA Braille is available to the wider community of phoneticians and linguists, who typically do not have access to the literature from specialized braille publishing houses.

Central Sama (ISO code sml) is spoken in the Philippines throughout the Sulu Archipelago and the Sibuguey Gulf to the north, and in many scattered communities as far north as Manila Bay. In Sabah, Malaysia, it is spoken primarily in the districts of Semporna and Kunak. For more information regarding the classification of this language within Austronesian, see Gordon (2005).

Tausug (ISO code tsg) is an Austronesian language spoken on the island of Jolo in the southwestern Philippines. It is also found on other nearby islands in the southwestern part of the Philippines and in parts of Sabah, Malaysia, where it is called Suluk. The population of the Tausug in the Philippines is estimated at 900,000 (Gordon 2005) and the year 2000 population estimate of the Suluk in Sabah, Malaysia, is 150,000. The following description is based on the variety spoken on Jolo. ‘The North Wind and the Sun’ text was translated from English into Tausug by Irene Hassan. Previous studies of Tausug phonology include Asmah (1978, 1983) and Hassan, Ashley & Ashley (1994). David Lao, age 62 at the time of the recording, born in Jolo, Philippines, was the reader for the Tausug words in this article. Due to difficult access into the language area, all audio recordings were obtained by Skype transmission.

Nen (ISO 639–3 code: nqn) is the easternmost language of the Yam (Morehead-Maro) family of Southern New Guinea. This family is one of over forty maximal genetic groupings in New Guinea, and is currently not relatable to any other language family in New Guinea or elsewhere. As with other aspects of their grammar, the phonology of the Morehead-Maro languages differs significantly from those of other Papuan languages. The phonology of Nen is broadly similar to that of other members of the family, except that (like most other members of the Nambu branch, of which it is a member) it lacks the velar nasal phoneme found in more westerly languages, and it has a smaller fricative inventory: other languages of the family include /ɸ ɣ θ/, all absent from Nen.

The present study was designed to test the effects of preceding and following context on the restoration of deleted and assimilated consonant sequences in conversational French speech. Consonant restoration was found to be enhanced by lexical information and by the different sources of information contained in the breath group. The fundamental contribution of breath-group information suggests that the breath group, which is a production unit in conversational speech, might be a perception unit. Interestingly, the results also appear to be in line with Lindblom's claim (1990, 1996) that speakers adapt their utterances to the listeners' needs and maintain sufficient contrast for promoting correct lexical access.

Several researchers have noted that intervocalic consonants are unusually long in Navajo (Sapir & Hoijer 1967, Young & Morgan 1987, McDonough & Ladefoged 1993). This paper explores intervocalic consonant duration in the Lheidli dialect of Dakelh (Carrier) in order to determine whether the long intervocalic consonants found in Navajo are characteristic of other Athabaskan languages as well. It is shown that Lheidli intervocalic consonants are substantially longer overall than (a) consonants in other positions within Lheidli, (b) vowels within Lheidli, and (c) singletons and geminates in other non-Athabaskan languages. Furthermore, intervocalic consonant duration is at least in part a function of morphological structure, with intervocalic consonants lengthening to signal a stem morpheme boundary. The data presented here provide new evidence for the existence of a language-specific phonetic component of grammar as well as for the interaction between phonetics and morphology.

We have all heard of the remote community in the Appalachians (or is it somewhere in the North of England ?) where the locals still supposedly speak pure Elizabethan English, unchanged for centuries. But this is not the only dialectological myth which persists tenaciously in the popular imagination and will no doubt continue to do so despite its lack of factual basis.