Scottish Gaelic is an endangered language with very few fluent speakers under 60. Recordings were collected in the neighbourhood of Greater Bernera, Lewis, from 11 native speakers. Aerodynamic and palatographic data were collected from one 70-year-old male speaker. Palatographic data made in 1955 by Frederick Macaulay, a Gaelic speaker from South Uist, provided additional information. Analysis showed that all the stops were voiceless unaspirated or aspirated, with the aspirated stops being preaspirated intervocalically. Spectra of various consonants were also determined. Vowel analyses showed the nature of the 7 long and short vowels. Special attention was paid to the back unrounded vowels. Problems of syllabicity were examined and shown to affect pitch contours.

Icelandic has a number of ‘surface minimal pairs’ between voiced and voiceless nasals. Facts and arguments are presented that speak for the phonemic status of these sounds, in contrast to the widespread view that voiceless nasals in Icelandic are derived. It is shown, among else, that stops after voiced and voiceless nasals are phonetically identical. Due to this fact it is not possible on synchronic grounds to ascribe the distinction between voiced and voiceless nasals to a distinction among the following stops, unless phonological abstractness is used as an analytical tool. The rarely mentioned case of single word-initial voiced versus voiceless nasals (where no subsequent stop occurs) would require an even greater commitment to phonological abstractness if the derived status of voiceless nasals were maintained. Implications for linguistic phonetics and the IPA are discussed.

This brief study investigates the development of fundamental frequency (FO) in pre-adolescent children as a function of age and sex. The children who took part in the study were divided into three age groups: 6, 8 and 10 years. Each group consisted of three males and three females. Each subject produced nine target phrases with [] in phrase-final position, which were elicited via a picture-naming task. FO was estimated for the nine target utterances and the following FO parameters were derived: mean FO for the whole phrase; FO range for the whole phrase; standard deviation values of FO for the whole phrase and mean FO for the phrase-final vowel [α:]. Results indicated that FO parameters generally decreased with age, and by age 10 years the males had lower values than the females for all four parameters. Results also indicated that the mean standard deviation of FO across the phrase was significantly higher for the females compared to that for the males.

Speakers of rural accents have been said to speak more slowly than speakers of urban accents. However, there would appear to have been no previous empirical investigation of such a claim. In the study reported here, recordings were made of 12 Orkney English speakers and 12 Edinburgh English speakers, during a reading task and in conversation with the experimenter. Measurements, in syllables per second, were made of both the Speaking Rate and the Articulation Rate (i.e. the rate calculated after excision of pauses) of each speaker in reading mode and in conversation mode. Comparison of the results for the two groups revealed no tendency for the urban (Edinburgh) speakers to speak faster than the rural (Orkney) speakers. The claim that rural speakers speak more slowly than urban speakers therefore still awaits empirical support. Some discussion is offered concerning the possible relationships among speech tempo, lifestyle and accent.

Many existing intonation studies tend to be unenlightening for three main reasons. First, they do not acknowledge that intonational variation may be functionally significant. By effectively ignoring functional variation among accents, investigators therefore run the risk of missing explanations for variation which may be theoretically important. The question of degree of perceptual relevance in intonational variation is not considered in detail here, although the basic assumption is that intonation is capable of performing a range of roles. Second, few studies attempt to provide a detailed explanation of the model they have used for analysing intonation. This means that there is no way of knowing whether, for instance, nuclearity in one accent is realised in identical ways in other accents, or even whether the concept of nuclearity is applicable in other varieties. Finally, existing accounts offer little information which is useful for developing intonational typologies. Clearly, this is a consequence of the failure to recognise variation and to provide an agreed analytic model. The present article addresses the shortcomings mentioned above and points towards a means of overcoming them by highlighting the need for a systematic phonological approach to intonation analysis.

A study of emotional speech has resulted in a collection of some five hours of recorded material. The analysis of this material has required computer-based annotation incorporating prosodic and paralinguistic transcription as well as the coding of various psychological variables. A version of the prosodic and paralinguistic transcription devised by Crystal & Quirk was developed for use within the xwavesTM environment. This paper describes this transcription system and its application.

In this paper the nature of the so-called percussives is investigated. It is shown that these sounds are often produced on oral airstream mechanisms, resulting in what can be termed ‘resonating percussives’. The three percussives so far identified are described together with the nature of their differing oralic airstream mechanisms, and recommended transcriptions are given.