Lateral bracing refers to an intentional tongue posture whereby the sides of the tongue make contact with the sides of the palate and the upper molars. While previous research on this topic has focused mostly on English, the present study tests the hypothesis that lateral bracing provides a fundamental postural basis for speech and is present across languages. We predicted that, across multiple languages, the sides of the tongue should be more stable than the center and should stay in a relatively high position in the mouth throughout most of running speech. Using coronal ultrasound imaging, we measured tongue movement produced by speakers (N = 28) of six languages (Akan, Cantonese, English, Korean, Mandarin and Spanish). Across these languages, as predicted, the sides of the tongue throughout running speech were positioned higher in the mouth than the center, and the range of movement of the sides was significantly smaller than that of the center of the tongue. These findings support the view that the sides of the tongue maintain a braced posture across languages while speaking, potentially constituting a universal, rather than language-specific, postural basis for speech.

The Ikema dialect of Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan, has typologically rare word-initial and voiced geminate obstruents (e.g. /vva/ ‘you’, /ffa/ ‘child’, /tta/ ‘tongue’, /badda/ ‘side’). These sounds are marked in two ways: Voicing through geminate obstruents is hard to produce and initial voiceless plosives seem to be difficult to perceive. This study investigated real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rt-MRI) to examine the articulatory settings underlying contrasts between singleton and geminate obstruents. Our analyses of two male speakers’ utterances showed the following five characteristics: (i) geminate obstruents in Ikema have longer duration of articulatory constrictions regardless of position and consonant types; (ii) the voiced alveolar plosive geminate /dd/ is articulated with a larger linguopalatal contact than its singleton counterpart but such difference depends on the speaker for the voiceless plosive pair /tt/–/t/ and the fricative pairs /ss/–/s/ and /zz/–/z/; (iii) alveolar voiceless plosives /t/ and /tt/ have a greater degree of linguopalatal contact than their voiced counterparts /d/ and /dd/, respectively, but fricatives show inter-speaker variation; (iv) fricatives do not show any systematic difference in degree of (midsagittal) linguopalatal contact between geminates and singletons, or between voiceless and voiced consonants; and (v) voiced geminate obstruents are accompanied by pharyngeal expansion for both speakers and by lowering the larynx for one speaker, and never by lowering of the velum. We also observed that voiced fricatives tend to realize as affricates, which we interpret as part of the articulatory adjustments for (full) voicing of phonologically voiced geminate fricatives.

Labiodental flaps exist in several African languages, and were first described by Doke (1931) in a study of Shona. Westermann and Ward (1933: 76) quote data from Tucker, who notes labiodental flaps in Kreish, a Central Sudanic language of the Sara-Bongo-Baguirmi group. In the same group of languages, Thomas (1981: 262) claims to find them in Bongo-Gberi and in Binga-Kara. Thomas defines these sounds as “vibrantes labiodentales” (see also Caprile 1981: 238). Hoffman (1963) and Ladefoged (1964) both identify these sounds in Margi. Cloarec-Heiss (1981: 225) reports such sounds in Banda, but describes them as “labiodentales lâches”, transcribed [ǔ]. Maddieson (1984) quotes two sounds of this type in the UPSID data base, one in Margi and the other in Gbeya.

Battaner-Moro (2003), a paper presented at the 15th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences, advances several erroneous claims concerning J. R. Firth's contributions to prosodic phonology. In this note, I show that the central aspects of Firth's phonological thinking were already manifest in his publications from the 1930s.

Dynamic electropalatography (EPG) (also known as dynamic palatography or palatometry) is a system for recording information about the tongue's contact with the hard palate over time. It is relatively inexpensive and technologically accessible. EPG is safe, provides spatial information on the shape of constriction contact, and allows the collection of reasonable acoustic data. Multiple sessions with a subject are possible and replicable. For these reasons, this method may be of interest to phoneticians. The purpose of this note is to serve as an introduction to interpreting palatograms. Much in the same way that phonetics students learn to read spectrograms, reading palatograms is a skill which can be honed by practice and experience. and just as looking at spectrograms of an unknown utterance can develop increased sensitivity to acoustic facts, reading palatograms can enhance awareness of details of articulation.

The custom of lip-plate insertion, as practiced by the Chai people, has an effect on the speech of women since it alters articulators needed for speech production: the lower lip and the lower incisors. Due to the effect of this practice, women cannot produce bilabial and dental consonants in their own language. Vowels are also affected, but the presence of the lip-plate does not affect the tonal system. This study further examines ways in which the lower lip and lower incisor mutilations are compensated for, and the acoustic effects involved in the ‘lip-plate speech’ as well as its implications for phonological theory.

This paper investigates the production of dental and retroflex stops, fricatives, nasals, and laterals in the Dravidian language Kannada. This is done using articulatory contours extracted from an extensive midsagittal MRI corpus of two female Kannada speakers’ static vocal tract postures intended to capture key aspects of phonemic articulations. Articulatory modelling was used to determine a set of components responsible for the implementation of place and manner contrasts (/t̪ s̪ n̪ l̪/ vs. /ʈ ʂ ɳ ɭ/). These components included both lingual and non-lingual articulatory parameters. Constriction location and length were also determined based on articulatory contours. The results showed that the two speakers produced non-fricative retroflexes with a retracted tongue tip making a constriction behind the alveolar ridge and a characteristic convex tongue shape, yet without a retraction of the posterior portion of the tongue. Apart from the lingual parameters, place differences were also manifested by the vertical position of the larynx (lower for retroflexes). The realisation of the place contrast in sibilant fricatives was different, as /ʂ/ appeared to be produced by both speakers with a laminal alveolopalatal constriction. Manner differences were captured by various non-lingual parameters, yet being also manifested in constriction locations (more anterior for stops). These findings are discussed in the context of previous descriptive and articulatory accounts of dental-retroflex contrasts.

This article presents data on the contextual reduction of /l/ in Spanish. Electropalatography (EPG) was used to examine realisations of word-final /l/ in prevocalic and preconsonantal environments in order to determine to what extent articulatory reduction of the /l/ is attributable to coarticulation with following segments. Previous studies using static palatography (Josselyn 1907) describe continuous relaxation of the articulatory stricture associated with /l/ in different phonological environments. These descriptions, in turn, have informed standard reference works on Spanish phonetics (e.g. Navarro Tomás 1957, Gili Gaya 1966). Additionally, theoretical work on other languages has argued in favour of syllable-based accounts of /l/-allophony and reduction patterns (e.g. English /l/-darkening and vocalisation), whereas instrumental studies have revealed complexities to these patterns that challenge syllable-based analyses. The findings of the EPG study reported on here confirm that /l/-reduction in Spanish is a gradient phenomenon that arises due to antagonistic coarticulatory forces. Thus, the reduction patterns that emerge in the data cannot be predicted on the basis of syllabification algorithms alone.

Windsor Lewis's recent article (1972b) admirably summarizes the case for a Gimson-type transcription as a reference tool for EFL students. As he states, his own ‘CPD’ (Windsor Lewis, 1972a) transcription clearly—and sensibly—derives from the system established by Gimson (1962, 1970) in ‘the standard up-to-date description of Received Pronunciation’. On general principles, there is little that could usefully be added to Windsor Lewis's (1972b) comments on three other transcription types that are increasingly coming to be regarded as inappropriate for EFL purposes:

(i) that used by Abercrombie (1964), which, as Windsor Lewis (1972b: 60–63) shows, has disadvantages in its choice of detail symbols (though in underlying philosophy this system is perhaps closer to ‘CPD’ than is the latter's acknowledged parent);

(ii) the long-established ‘EPD’ (Jones, 1917) system, with its inconsistent treatment of the monophthong phonemes;

(iii) the ‘simplified’ (Jones, 1956: 346 ff.) types of transcription first used in books by Scott (1942) and MacCarthy (1944, 1945) and taken up by Kingdon (West, 1965) and others, which although useful for the Ll speaker are grossly misleading for the EFL student in implying a solely quantitative distinction between such pairs as the vowels of seat and sit.

This article will largely take for granted Windsor Lewis's comments on those types, and will concentrate on some aspects of the system discussed by Windsor Lewis (1972b) and applied in his CPD and the new third edition (1974) of the Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

Data from about one hundred languages reveal that, in spite of resulting typically from articulatory reduction of peripheral vowels in unstressed position, full schwa may also occur in stressed position in stress languages and in unreduced syllables in languages lacking stress. Formant frequency data reveal that this vowel is mid central, though somewhat shifted to the mid back unrounded area (particularly if long and placed in open syllables and at the edges of words), and exhibits a higher or lower realization depending on the number of mid vowels in the vowel system. In spite of occurring in stressed position, full schwa resembles unstressed schwa in being very short, highly variable and possibly low intensity, which accounts for why it is prone to occur in closed syllables and longer words, and may receive stress only if the remaining vowel nuclei in the word are central and/or short peripheral. Moreover, variability in the F1 and F2 dimensions increases with the number of peripheral mid vowels, which appears to obey symmetry and dispersion principles of vowel space organization.

The most important tone sandhi is that of tone-3. Each of the two forms of bisyllabic sequences in Chinese, the quasi-iambic and the trochaic, has two types of tone sandhi pattern. As far as the quasi-iambic sequence is concerned, tone-3 followed by other tones (including the neutral tone) except another tone-3 changes to ½ tone-3. Tone-3 followed by another tone-3 changes to tone-2. As far as the trochaic sequence is concerned, tone-3 followed by the neutral tone derived originally from tone-3 changes either to ½ tone-3 as before any other neutral tone, or to tone-2 as before any stressed tone-3. Tone-3 followed by the first type of trochaic sequence changes to tone-2, and that followed by the second type changes to ½ tone-3. Tone sandhi patterns of the sequences formed by three stressed tone-3 syllables, though mostly determined by the IC, are rather inconsistent; they vary from speaker to speaker. There are two types of tone sandhi patterns of the sequences formed by more than three stressed tone-3 syllables. The first type is uttered with a momentary pause which has the function of separating one IC from another. The second type is uttered without the pause. Thus only the tone pattern of the final syllable remains unchanged. Whether a polysyllabic sequence is uttered with a momentary pause or not depends on the speaker. In general, due to the influence of stress distribution, 223-sequences and 2223-sequences may optionally change to 213-sequences and 2123-sequences respectively when they are spoken faster. This confirms that the description of sandhi patterns in the second paragraph of section 1 is correct.

Vocal tract steadiness reflected by measurement of fluctuation of the second formant frequency is reported for vowel production of Mandarin-accented English (MAE). Fluctuations of the second formant frequency for the 11 English vowels (/i ɪ e ɛ æ ʌ u ʊ o ɔ ɑ/) were examined in the syllable-level productions of 40 Mandarin speakers compared to 40 American English (AE) speakers. Results of the comparative analysis indicate that the pattern of vocal tract steadiness of MAE speakers is generally different in comparison to AE speakers. The discrepancy of vocal tract steadiness between MAE and AE speakers are interpreted as the probable outcome of brain reorganization in adult L2 learning. In addition, discussions of likely gender dimorphism in brain reorganization in L2 learning are provided in view of the opposite patterns of vocal tract steadiness demonstrated by MAE females and males, in comparison to their AE counterparts.

In preparation for the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989, this report summarizes preliminary discussions of possible improvements and changes to individual symbols and diacritics in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It details responses to a questionnaire sent out on 22 October 1988. Specific questions were suggested by a number of sources: my own paper (Henton 1987), reactions to that paper, and from discussions with other phoneticians. The questionnaire was written with a view to eliciting simple and democratic input, rather than to promoting certain symbols or suggestions over others. It was sent to 38 members of the Association who rated the section on ‘Individual symbols and diacritics’ 1–5 (on a scale of 17, with 1 being highest preference) in their reponses to the invitation to revise the International Phonetic Association's alphabet. Eighty members originally replied to the call for input to the Kiel meeting, so the 38 who placed this section high in their preferences are a good portion (47%) of members actively concerned with this Convention.