It is surely incontestable that the IPA alphabet, like the system of vowel and consonant classification on which it is based, contains obvious anomalies; some or others of which have been discussed in recent proposals for reform (e.g. Breckwoldt 1971, McClure 1972, Hammarström 1973). Fox (1975), in an interesting attempt to widen the scope of the discussion, has argued that the anomalies are less serious than they appear, on the grounds that (a) they do not interfere with the practical usefulness of the alphabet, and (b) a more positive and more fundamental point—they reflect in some cases what appear to be linguistic universals, such as the potential use of retroflex consonants as a distinctive category and the widespread preference for voiced over voiceless nasals.

The aim of this paper is to describe and compare the spectral and temporal properties of Estonian palatalized and non-palatalized consonants /l n s t/ and the vowels that precede them. Acoustic recordings of 43 native Estonian subjects producing word pairs where palatalization differentiated meaning were analyzed in this study. We offer a new perspective on how palatalization is realized by employing a dynamic analysis of the formant trajectories in order to objectively quantify how far the scope of palatalization reaches in the preceding vowel. Results showed that, as in other languages, the most persisting correlate of Estonian palatalization is the rise in F2 in the preceding vowel, where the values are almost always higher already from the beginning. F2 values are higher for /l/ and lower for /n/. The COG (center of gravity) of /s/ is lower in the beginning but rises in the middle. The COG of the burst of /t/ is lower in the onset. As expected, the duration of the vowels preceding consonants is longer, presumably because of the palatalization gesture, but the duration of the consonants does not show a systematic pattern with palatalization.

This article presentsan acoustic phonetic study of contemporary Diné Bizaad (Navajo) sibilant harmony, with a focus on the realization of /s/ and /ʃ/ in two verbal prefixes and one nominal prefix. Data come from wordlists and connected speech recorded in interviews with 50 Diné Bizaad–English bilinguals, aged 18–75 years. The frequency of harmony in each prefix is calculated for speakers of different ages, then acoustic measurements of spectral center of gravity are measured and statistically compared to those in sibilants occurring in harmony-triggering and non-harmony triggering conditions. Results show no significant intergenerational differences in the phonetic or phonological realization of sibilant harmony; speakers consistently and categorically harmonize the two verbal prefixes analyzed here, but rarely harmonize the nominal prefix. This study contributes new phonetic documentation of a typologically rare phonological process and suggests that, in contrast to findings from other studies on endangered languages, sibilant harmony is not undergoing attrition or contact-induced change.

Kejom [k̀ɘd͡ʒɔ́m], the preferred autonym for the language more commonly known as Babanki, is a Central Ring Grassfields Bantu language (ISO 693-3: [bbk]) spoken in the Northwest Region of Cameroon (Hyman 1980, Hammarström et al. 2017, Simons & Fennig 2017). The language is spoken mainly in two settlements shown in Figure 1, Kejom Ketinguh [k̀ɘd͡ʒɔ́m ↓kɘ́tÍⁿɡ̀uʔ] and Kejom Keku [k̀ɘd͡ʒɔ́m ↓kɘ́k̀u], also known as Babanki Tungoh and Big Babanki, respectively, but also to some extent in diaspora communities outside of Cameroon. Simons & Fennig (2017) state that the number of speakers is increasing; however, the figure of 39,000 speakers they provide likely overestimates the number of fluent speakers in diaspora communities. The two main settlements’ dialects exhibit slight phonetic, phonological, and lexical differences but are mutually intelligible. The variety of Kejom described here is the Kejom Ketinguh variant spoken by the second author; all data and examples which we take into account are based on his speech.