The present study examines the effect of two potential catalysts for interlanguage phonetic interaction, code-switching and language mode, on the production of voice onset time (VOT) to better understand the role of (near) simultaneous dual language activation on phonetic production, as well as the nature of phonetic transfer. An oral production paradigm was carried out in which Spanish–English bilinguals produced words with initial voiceless stops as non-switched tokens, code-switched tokens in an otherwise monolingual context, and code-switched tokens in a bilingual context. Results demonstrated a degree of phonetic transfer associated with code-switching, either unidirectional or bi-directional. Specifically, English, with long lag VOT, was more susceptible to phonetic transfer than Spanish (short lag). Contrary to expectations, while the code-switching effect was present in both monolingual and bilingual mode, there was no additional transfer, or additive effect, of bilingual language mode. Differences in the effects of code-switching on English and Spanish are discussed with respect to the inherently different acceptable VOT ranges in the two languages. Furthermore, the lack of difference in VOT between the code-switched tokens in the monolingual and bilingual contexts is taken to suggest limits on phonetic transfer.

This study explores the phenomenon of uvularization in the vowel systems of two Heishui County varieties of Qiang, a Sino-Tibetan language of Sichuan Province, China. Ultrasound imaging (one speaker) shows that uvularized vowels have two tongue gestures: a rearward gesture, followed by movement toward the place of articulation of the corresponding plain vowel. Time-aligned acoustic and articulatory data show how movement toward the uvula correlates with changes in the acoustic signal. Acoustic correlates of uvularization (taken from two speakers) are seen most consistently in raising of vowel F1, lowering of F2 and in raising of the difference F3-F2. Imaging data and the formant structure of [l] show that uvular approximation can begin during the initial consonant that precedes a uvularized vowel. Uvularization is reflected phonologically in the phonotactic properties of vowels, while vowel harmony aids in the identification of plain–uvularized vowel pairs. The data reported in this paper argue in favor of a revision of the catalog of secondary articulations recognized by the International Phonetic Alphabet, in order to include uvularization, which can be marked with the symbol [ʶ] in the case of approximation and [χ] for secondary uvular frication.

This study examines articulatory characteristics of the three-way contrast in labial stops /p php*/ (lenis, aspirated, fortis, respectively) in Korean in phrase-initial and phrase-medial prosodic positions with a two-fold goal. First, it investigates supralaryngeal articulatory reflexes of the stops and explores articulatory invariance of these stops across prosodic positions. Second, it investigates Korean stops in kinematic terms from the perspective of domain-initial strengthening, and explores the nature of prosodically-conditioned speech production from a dynamical perspective. Results showed that the articulatory reflex of the three-way contrast was invariantly observed across prosodic positions with lip constriction degree (/p/</ph/</p*/), while lip constriction duration showed a binary distinction (/p/</php*/). Kinematically, there was only very weak articulatory evidence for the contrast across prosodic positions: The V-to-C lip closing movement tended to be faster for /ph/ than for /p/, and the C-to-V lip opening movement tended to be larger for /php*/ than for /p/. As for domain-initial strengthening, the consonantal lip closing gesture was characterized by a larger, longer and slower articulation, whereas the vocalic lip opening gesture (after the release) was larger and faster, but not longer. Kinematic relations indicated that the lip closing movement is most likely controlled by a rate of the clock (possibly modulated by a temporal modulation gesture, or π-gesture) comparable to boundary effects in English, but the boundary-induced lip opening movement was better accounted for by a change in target (possibly modulated by a spatial modulation gesture, or μ-gesture) which was comparable to prominence rather than boundary effects in English. The cross-linguistic difference was interpreted as coming from different prosodic systems between Korean and English, presumably instantiated in dynamical terms of how the temporal and the spatial modulation gestures are phased with constriction gestures in relation to boundary marking versus prominence marking.

Although the segmental properties of Kyungsang Korean have been known to be distinct from those of standard Seoul Korean, the increased influence of Seoul Korean on the regional variety casts doubt on the homogeneity of the dialect. The current study investigated whether the acoustic properties of the vowels and fricatives in Kyungsang Korean are retained by both younger and older generations through a comparison with Seoul Korean. Results of acoustic analyses with 38 female Korean speakers differing in dialect (Kyungsang, Seoul) and age (older, younger) showed that the younger Kyungsang speakers did not maintain the vowel and fricative features unique to their regional dialect, but rather approximate those of standard Seoul Korean. In the acoustic study of vowels, measures of formant frequencies showed that the younger Kyungsang and Seoul speakers share seven vowels, which result from the split of /ʌ/–/ɨ/ in Kyungsang and the merger of /e/–/ε/ in Seoul Korean. In the acoustic study of fricatives, measures of fricative duration and center of gravity showed that while the two-way fricative contrast is less distinct for older Kyungsang speakers, younger speakers clearly distinguish the two fricatives similar to Seoul speakers. As a consequence of these generational changes in Kyungsang Korean, the six vowels and lack of a fricative contrast exhibited by older generations have given way to seven vowels and a clear distinction between fortis and non-fortis fricatives for younger generations. Based on the similarities in segmental properties between younger Kyungsang and Seoul speakers, it appears that the diachronic sound change is underway in South Kyungsang Korean under the influence of Seoul Korean.

In Central Catalan, phonological vowel reduction causes the stressed seven-vowel system to reduce in number in unstressed position, where only the three reduced vowels [i ə u] can occur. Exceptionally, full vowels (typically expected in a stressed syllable only) can appear in unstressed syllables in certain contexts. This study explores the acoustic characteristics of phonologically unreduced vowels found exceptionally in unstressed position in Central Catalan and compares them to stressed full vowels and corresponding unstressed (phonologically reduced) vowels. Results show that, contrary to traditional descriptions, presumably phonologically unreduced vowels in verb + noun compounds sporadically undergo phonological vowel reduction. When they do not, they are shorter than stressed vowels and more centralized in the F1*F2 vowel space. In addition, stressed full vowels do not differ in accented vs. unaccented contexts in duration or vowel quality, indicating that vowels are hyperarticulated under lexical stress, but not when they receive intonational pitch accent. The findings contribute to a body of cross-linguistic research dealing with the influence of prosody at the segmental level.

In this study we report on an instrumental analysis of /spstsk/ clusters in south-central Peninsular Spanish, documenting a three-way system of /s/ realization: speakers tend to produce alveolar fricatives in /st/ clusters, velar fricatives in /sk/ clusters, and glottal fricatives or deletions in /sp/ clusters. An analysis based on the discrete classification of /s/ variants shows that a combination of linguistic factors (following consonant and stress) influences /s/ realization. An analysis based on the phonetic coding of /s/ variants (using measures of fricative duration, relative voicing, and center of gravity) reveals the extent to which velar fricatives display an intermediate status along the phonetic continuum of /s/ lenition variations. Taken together, these analyses shed light on the nature of coda /s/ in Spanish and on the extent to which the attested allophony constitutes a lenition process.

This article investigates sound change in the vowels of Māori, the indigenous language of New Zealand. It examines the relationship between sound changes in Māori and in New Zealand English, the more dominant language, with which Māori has been in close contact for nearly 200 years. We report on the analysis of three adult speaker groups whose birth dates span 100 years. All speakers were bilingual in Māori and New Zealand English. In total the speech of 31 men and 31 women was investigated. Analysis was done on the first and second formant values, extracted from the vowel targets. There has been considerable movement in the Māori vowel space. We find that the sound change in the Māori monophthongs can be directly attributed to the impact of New Zealand English, however the situation for the diphthongs is not so clear cut. There is some evidence that both New Zealand English monophthongs and diphthongs are impacting on the Māori diphthongs, but so too are the Māori monophthongs. We conclude that although New Zealand English has had a strong influence on Māori, there is very strong evidence that new generations of speakers of Māori are acquiring a phonemic system with its own internal parameters and consistencies.

The present study examined lexical stress patterns in Uyghur, a Turkic language. The main goal of this research was to isolate and determine which acoustic parameters provide cues to stress in Uyghur. A number of studies have investigated the phonetic correlates of lexical stress across the world's languages, with stressed syllables often longer in duration, higher in pitch, and greater in amplitude. The present study systematically investigated the acoustic cues to stress in Uyghur, examining duration, fundamental frequency, and amplitude. Three experiments were conducted: one utilizing minimal pairs in Uyghur, one examining disyllabic nouns in Uyghur that contrasted in the first syllable, and one investigating the interaction of lexical stress with Uyghur sentence intonation. The data consistently show that duration was a robust cue to stress in Uyghur, with less consistent effects for intensity. The data also clearly show that fundamental frequency was not a cue to lexical stress in Uyghur. Uyghur does not use the fundamental frequency to distinguish stressed from unstressed syllables. The results suggest that Uyghur does not pattern like a pitch-accent language (e.g. Turkish), but rather like a stress-accent language.

The study is concerned with the relative synchronic stability of three contrastive sibilant fricatives /s ʂ ɕ/ in Polish. Tongue movement data were collected from nine first-language Polish speakers producing symmetrical real and non-word CVCV sequences in three vowel contexts. A Gaussian model was used to classify the sibilants from spectral information in the noise and from formant frequencies at vowel onset. The physiological analysis showed an almost complete separation between /s ʂ ɕ/ on tongue-tip parameters. The acoustic analysis showed that the greater energy at higher frequencies distinguished /s/ in the fricative noise from the other two sibilant categories. The most salient information at vowel onset was for /ɕ/, which also had a strong palatalizing effect on the following vowel. Whereas either the noise or vowel onset was largely sufficient for the identification of /s ɕ/ respectively, both sets of cues were necessary to separate /ʂ/ from /s ɕ/. The greater synchronic instability of /ʂ/ may derive from its high articulatory complexity coupled with its comparatively low acoustic salience. The data also suggest that the relatively late stage of /ʂ/ acquisition by children may come about because of the weak acoustic information in the vowel for its distinction from /s/.

Lusoga is an interlacustrine Bantu language spoken in the eastern part of Uganda in the region of Busoga, which is surrounded by the Victoria Nile in the west, Lake Kyoga in the north, the River Mpologoma in the east and Lake Victoria in the south. According to the 2002 census, this language is spoken by slightly over two million people (UBOS 2006: 12).

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.

This paper provides an acoustic phonetic description of Hawai‘i English vowels. The data comprise wordlist tokens produced by twenty-three speakers (twelve males and eleven females) and spontaneous speech tokens produced by ten of those speakers. Analysis of these vowel tokens shows that while there are similarities between Hawai‘i English and other dialects, the particular combination of vowel realizations in Hawai‘i English is unique to this dialect. Additionally, there are characteristics of the Hawai‘i English vowel system that are not found in other English dialects. These findings suggest that Hawai‘i English is a unique regional variety that warrants further description.

Makasar is an Austronesian language belonging to the South Sulawesi subgroup within the large Western-Malayo Polynesian family. It is spoken by about two million people in the province of South Sulawesi in Indonesia, and is the second largest language on the island of Sulawesi (behind Bugis, with about three million speakers). The phonology is notable for the large number of geminate and pre-glottalised consonant sequences, while the morphology is characterised by highly productive affixation and pervasive encliticisation of pronominal and aspectual elements. The language has a literary tradition including detailed local histories (Cummings 2002), and over the centuries has been represented orthographically in many ways: with two indigenous Indic or aksara-based scripts, a system based on Arabic script, and a variety of Romanised conventions. From at least the early 18th century Macassan sailors travelled regularly to northern Australia to collect and process trepang or sea cucumber (Macknight 1976), and many loanwords passed into Aboriginal languages of the northern part of Australia (Evans 1992, 1997).

Dari, or Afghan Persian (Indo-European, Iranian, Southwestern; ISO 639-3: prs; Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2013), is one of the national languages of Afghanistan, and a language of wider communication in much of the country. It is one of the three major Persian varieties, the others being Farsi (or Iranian Persian) and Tajiki (or Tajik Persian). Afghans refer to Dari either as [dɐˈɾi] or [fʌɾˈsi].

Chicahuaxtla Triqui [i.kaˈwaks.a ˈtɾi.ki] or Nânj ǹï'ïn [nã4hnɯ1ʔɯ3] ‘the complete language’, as named by the Triqui people, is one of three languages in the Triqui subfamily of the Mixtecan family. The Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI 2014; http://www.inali.gob.mx/clin-inali/) lists two other Triqui languages with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility for speakers of Chicahuaxtla Triqui (Casad 1974: 79) – the first is spoken in San Martín Itunyoso and the other in San Juan Copala.

Amarasi (ISO 693–3 aaz), spoken in the south-western part of the island of Timor, is at one end of the complex Uab Meto language chain. Uab Meto (also called Dawan[ese], Timorese or Atoni) is a cluster of closely related Austronesian languages and dialects spoken in Timor.

Gitksan (git) is an Interior Tsimshianic language spoken in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. It is closely related to Nisga'a, and more distantly related to Coast Tsimshian and Southern Tsimshian. The specific dialect of Gitksan presented here is what can be called Eastern Gitksan, spoken in the villages of Kispiox (Ansbayaxw), Glen Vowell (Sigit'ox), and Hazelton (Git-an'maaxs), which contrasts with the Western dialects, spoken in the villages of Kitwanga (Gitwingax), Gitanyow (Git-anyaaw), and Kitseguecla (Gijigyukwhla). The primary phonological differences between the dialects are a lexical shift in vowels and the presence of stop lenition in the Eastern dialects. While there exists a dialect continuum, the primary cultural and political distinction drawn is between Eastern and Western Gitksan. For reference, Gitksan is bordered on the west by Nisga'a, in the south by Coast Tsimshian and Witsuwit'en, in the east by Dakelh and Sekani, and in the north by Tahltan (the latter four of these being Athabaskan languages).

Setswana (also known as ‘Tswana’ or, more archaically, ‘Chuana’ or ‘Sechuana’) is a Bantu language (group S.30; ISO code tsn) spoken by an estimated four million people in South Africa. There are a further one million or more speakers in Botswana, where it is the dominant national language, and a smaller number of speakers in Namibia. The recordings accompanying this article were mostly produced with a 21-year-old male speaker from the area of Taung, North-West province, South Africa. Some of the accompanying recordings are of a 23-year-old female speaker from Kuruman (approximately 150 km west of Taung). The observations reported here are based on consulting with both these speakers, as well as a third speaker, from Kimberley. All three were speakers of South African Setswana varieties. For discussion of some differences between these varieties and more Northern and Eastern Setswana dialects – including those spoken in Botswana – see (Doke 1954, Cole 1955, University of Botswana 2001).