Many phonetic and phonological processes resemble one another, which has led some researchers to suggest that phonetics and phonology are essentially the same. This study compares phonetic and phonological processes of consonant lengthening by analyzing duration measurements collected from Hungarian speakers (n = 14). Affricates, which crucially possess a two-part structure, were placed in target positions. Results show that affricates regularly undergo phonetic lengthening at phrase boundaries, and the affected portion of the affricate is always that which lies closer to the boundary. Affricates also regularly undergo phonological lengthening when next to a geminating suffix, but the affected portion of the affricate is always the stop closure. Thus, while phonetic lengthening observes a strict respect for locality, phonological lengthening does not, and we conclude that the two processes are in fact quite different from one another.

This paper describes the consonant inventory of the endangered southern African language Nǀuu. Our novel approach to segment classification accounts for all 73 Nǀuu consonants with just four phonetic dimensions (place, manner, phonation, airstream) and does away with the phonetically empty category click accompaniment. We provide ultrasound data showing that the posterior constrictions in clicks are not produced at the ‘velar’ place of articulation, and that posterior place differs with anterior place. We therefore argue for a terminological shift from velaric to lingual airstream mechanism. Our data also show that the posterior place of articulation is the same in Nǀuu's five lingual ([⊙ ǀ ǃ ǁ ǂ]) and linguo-pulmonic ([]) stops. We argue that the difference between these segment classes is best captured in terms of airstream, not place. Plain clicks use only the lingual airstream, while linguo-pulmonic segments are airstream contours, in which the transition to the pulmonic airstream occurs within the segment rather than at its boundary. Our evidence suggests that the contrast between ‘velar’ and ‘uvular’ clicks proposed for the related language ǃXóõ is likely also one of airstream and that a contrast solely in terms of posterior place would be articulatorily impossible.

Australian English /t/ has a fricative realisation in some contexts. The presence of an additional surface fricative in the language raises questions about potential merger and the maintenance of contrasts. An orthographic representation of fricated /t/ as 〈sh〉 suggests a similarity to the existing fricative /ʃ/. This paper compares the acoustic characteristics of fricated realisations of /t/ in Australian English with those of /ʃ/ and /s/, the fricatives judged most likely to be acoustically similar. The findings suggest a great degree of similarity to /ʃ/ in terms of spectral measures, with duration being the most likely perceptual means of distinguishing fricated /t/ from /ʃ/.

This paper offers an analysis of Cuzco Quechua intonation using experimental techniques to examine one of the acoustic cues of pitch, the fundamental frequency or F0. While previous descriptions in the literature are based on auditory impression, in the present study recordings were made of read declaratives produced by native Quechua speakers in Cuzco, Peru. This paper provides an initial characterization of high and low tones with respect to the stressed syllable, as well as information regarding the height and alignment of these tones. In addition, the intonational marking of intermediate phrases within an utterance is discussed. Research on Quechua intonation can be used to begin to address several issues regarding the intonation of languages in contact, as well as to provide data for a future cross-linguistic analysis of indigenous language intonation features.

The Chong language uses a combination of different acoustic correlates to distinguish among its four contrastive registers (phonation types). Electroglottographic (EGG) and acoustic data were examined from original fieldwork on the Takhian Thong dialect. EGG data shows high open quotient (OQ) values for the breathy register, low OQ values for the tense register, intermediate OQ values for the modal register, and rapidly changing high to low OQ values for the breathy-tense register. Acoustic correlates indicate that H1-A3 best distinguishes between breathy and non-breathy phonation, but measures like H1-H2 and pitch are necessary to discriminate between tense and non-tense phonation. A comparison of spectral tilt and OQ measures shows the greatest correlation between OQ and H1-H2, suggesting that changes in the relative amplitude of frequencies in the upper spectrum are not directly related to changes in the open period of the glottal cycle. OQ is best correlated with changes in the degree of glottal tension.

This study presents jaw movement data from Central Arrernte, an Australian Aboriginal language with six places of articulation in the stop series, including four coronal places of articulation. The focus of the study is on jaw consonant targets, and on the opening and closing movements of the jaw. As a point of comparison, data are also presented for English, a language with three places of articulation in the stop series. In line with previous results for English, jaw position in Arrernte is lowest for the velar /k/. The apico-post-alveolar (retroflex) /ʈ/, which is not found in English, has a jaw position almost as low as /k/. By contrast, the lamino-alveo-palatal /c/, which is also not found in English, has the highest jaw position. The remaining coronal consonants in Arrernte, /t / (apico-alveolar and lamino-dental, respectively), show intermediate jaw positions, with differences between speakers. In terms of the kinematic measures examined (namely, variability in distance, duration and velocity of opening and closing movements), results show no consistent differences between English and Arrernte jaw movement.

This study is an acoustic investigation of the nature and extent of consonant voicing of the stop /b/ in two dialectal varieties of American English spoken in south-central Wisconsin and western North Carolina. The stop /b/ occurred at the juncture of two words such as small bids, in a position between two voiced sonorants, i.e. the liquid /l/ and a vowel. Twenty women participated, ten representing the Wisconsin and ten the North Carolina variety, respectively. Significant dialectal differences were found in the voicing patterns. The Wisconsin stop closures were usually not fully voiced and terminated in a complete silence followed by a closure release whereas North Carolina speakers produced mostly fully voiced closures. Further dialectal differences included the proportion of closure voicing as a function of word emphasis. For Wisconsin speakers, the proportion of closure voicing was smallest when the word was emphasized and it was greatest in non-emphatic positions. For North Carolina speakers, the degree of word emphasis did not have an effect on the proportion of closure voicing. The results suggest different mechanisms by which closure voicing is maintained in these two dialects, pointing to active articulatory maneuvers in North Carolina speakers and passive in Wisconsin speakers.

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.

This study examines acoustic characteristics of a three-way distinction among a set of voiceless coronal fricatives and two sets of voiceless coronal affricates in Anong, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language. The study shows a lack of parallelism between the fricative and affricate series. The fricatives are well differentiated by spectral shapes and formant transitions of the following vowels, but not by the center of gravity. The affricates are well differentiated by the center of gravity, but not by spectral shapes nor by formant transitions of the following vowels. The study shows that /ʂ/ is acoustically a retroflex, while /tʂʰ tʂ/ are not.

The purpose of this study is to examine voice onset time as a phonetic correlate of voicing distinction in standard Persian. Issues pertinent to VOT are also addressed: namely, the effect of place of articulation, vowel context and sex of speakers. The VOTs were measured from recordings of five male and five female speakers reading 65 words that contained a full set of Persian oral stops in word initial and intervocalic positions. This acoustic experiment indicated that VOT distinguishes voiced from voiceless stops. The results also revealed that Persian uses mainly {voiceless unaspirated} and {voiceless aspirated} categories for [±voice] distinction in initial position and {voiced} and {voiceless aspirated} categories in intervocalic position. Vowel context also affected VOT values but the only significant difference was due to high vowels, which caused the preceding voiceless stop to have a longer VOT. Examining sex differences in the VOT values indicated that for voiced items females produced longer VOTs than males. However, voiceless items displayed no significant sex differences for VOT values. Fundamental frequency (F0) of the onset of the following vowel was also examined as another cue to voice distinction. Although the F0 values of voiceless tokens were higher than those of the voiced ones in each voiced–voiceless category, the results suggest that F0 is not a major cue distinguishing the two stop categories.

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.

This paper investigates how the tonal targets of rises in Persian are phonetically realized in relation to the segmental string. Three types of cliticized Persian Accentual Phrases (APs) are instrumentally compared with one another: high-boundary-toned pre-nuclear APs, low-boundary-toned nuclear APs, and low-boundary-toned contrastive focus APs. The results show that the valley is always aligned with the consonant preceding the stressed vowel, but the alignment of the peak is with the consonant following the stressed vowel if the AP boundary tone is low, and with the following vowel if it is high. The duration of the focus AP is greater than that of the other two. The pitch excursion of the focus AP is significantly greater than that of the nuclear type. This difference is caused by different peak heights. While pre-nuclear and nuclear APs can be phonologically represented by L + H*, focus APs, which are pragmatically different, warrant a distinct pitch accent, namely L + ^H*. The systematic alignment of the L and the H, and the variability of the time and slope of the rise support the view that pitch targets rather than pitch movements are the fundamentals of Persian intonation.

In the weeks following the publication, of our article ‘Do we need a symbol for a central open vowel?’ (Barry & Trouvain 2008), we received 12 personal communications commenting on and discussing the points we had made. Martin Ball has since published his discussion points in JIPA (Ball 2009), as has Daniel Recasens (Recasens 2009), who was not among the 12 who contacted us directly. Thus it would be fitting for us to summarize the points made by the 11 members whose opinions have not yet been made known to the rest of the IPA community and to refine our standpoint in the light of Recasens’ and Ball's comments.

In the paper ‘Do we need a symbol for a central open vowel?’, William Barry and Jürgen Trouvain unveil possible gaps in the IPA chart while positing the need for having three basic phonetic symbols for transcribing open vowels of the world's languages. The main point raised by the authors is that the phonetic quality of a in languages with a single open vowel is somewhere in between that of the open front and back vowels in more complex vowel systems. They exemplify this point by referring to the open vowel of the Spanish word gata, which is usually transcribed with the symbol [a] in spite of being more central than Cardinal Vowel 4. Several possible solutions are proposed: adding small capital A or barred a for the open central vowel to the already existing symbols [a] and [ɑ]; keeping [ɑ] for the open back vowel, moving the symbol [a] to the open central vowel position, and having either [æ] or small capital A as symbols for the open front vowel. As argued below, I do not believe that three IPA phonetic symbols are really needed for the transcription of different variants of a.

I leave to others the argument as to whether there is sufficient justification to add a central open vowel symbol to the IPA. Rather, in this response, I would like to comment on the various proposals for what such a symbol should be outlined in Barry & Trouvain (2008). I will not be following the original ordering of suggestions in the article, but start with the proposals to redefine current symbols.

Estonian belongs to the Finnic branch of the Finno-Ugric language family and is closely related to Finnish. It has about one million native speakers in Estonia and about 150,000 elsewhere in the world. In phonetics, Estonian is probably best known for its three degrees of contrastive quantity: short (Q1), long (Q2) and overlong (Q3).

Nepali, a language of the Indo-Aryan family, is the official language of Nepal. According to the 2001 population census of Nepal, more than 11 million Nepalese (48.61% of the total population) claim this language as their mother tongue. It is also spoken in other countries of South Asia, such as India and Bhutan, as well as by members of the Nepalese Diaspora around the world. The population census of India of 1991 reported that more than two million Indians use Nepali as their mother tongue. Within Nepal, Nepali shows some dialectal variation mainly linked to geographical and socio-cultural factors. Nevertheless, the dialect called the ‘eastern’ dialect spoken by a majority of Nepali speakers shows rather little variation (Bandhu et al. 1971).