Click consonants are well known for lacking allophonic variation. This lack of variation has been attributed to the existence of articulatory constraints on the coronal constrictions that are imposed by the existence of a second dorsal constriction. The current study investigates temporal acoustic differences among the four contrastive coronal click types in the /i/ and /u/ contexts in Mangetti Dune !Xung. Clicks have been described as being either non-affricated or affricated. However, when vowel context is taken into consideration, the typology is more complex. The alveolar click is non-affricated in both vowel contexts. The dental and lateral clicks are fricated in both contexts. The palatal click in the /i/ context has two clear anterior and posterior transients, followed by palatal frication, while in the /u/ context it is non-affricated. Results are consistent with an analysis of the palatal click in the /i/ context as involving allophonic secondary palatalization. There are trading relations between the duration of the click burst, frication noise and aspiration noise phases. Results have implications for understanding the synchronic and diachronic phonology of click consonants.

The present study aims to approach soft ‘g’, a highly disputable sound in Turkish phonetics and phonology, from a multidimensional perspective by (i) analysing its historical development, (ii) investigating its distribution in a dictionary of Modern Turkish, and (iii) studying its acoustic realization. In the Ottoman script soft ‘g’ was represented with two letters: <غ>, pronounced [ɣ], was used in the context of preceding back vowels Vback_(Vback, C); <گ>, pronounced [j], was used in the context of preceding front vowels Vfront_(Vfront, C). In 1928, due to a reform in orthography, these two vocalic contexts were obscured by replacing both <غ> and <گ> with <ğ>. Our investigation of the distribution of /ğ/ in the native vocabulary of Modern Turkish reveals that /ğ/ is in complementary distribution with /ɡ/: /ğ/ appears word-finally and word-medially (i.e. syllable-finally Vğ.C and intervocalically V.ğV), while /ɡ/ is found word-initially and word-medially (i.e. syllable-initially when following a consonant C.ğV). However, in loan words which are well assimilated into Turkish by means of phono-morphological rules the complementary distribution is not attested. Moreover, the behavior of soft ‘g’ in phonological processes strongly suggests that the sound is part of the phonemic inventory of Turkish. Finally, the results of our two acoustic experiments show that /ğ/ is phonetically manifested in the lengthening of the preceding vowel (/Vğ/ → [Vː]) independently of the surrounding vowel environment, word position, and participant age. In addition, the results indicate that speakers of Modern Turkish do not realize acoustic properties of a velar gesture.

This paper presents an experimental articulatory characterisation of lateral /l/ and nasal /n/ in Basque, using MRI midsagittal images. In order to assess previous observations of retroflexion or velarisation in these consonants in Basque, a battery of articulatory parameters is used which can be directly measured on the images. This set of parameters, focused on the description of the tongue shape and position, permits a fine-grained characterisation of the articulation of the two consonants under study, indicating the possible existence of a double articulation pattern in /l/ and, less clearly, in /n/. The results help to compensate for the lack of experimental descriptions on the articulation of Basque.

Saterland Frisian (Sfrs. Seeltersk) is the only living remnant of Old East Frisian. It is an endangered language, with an estimated number of 2250 speakers (Stellmacher 1998: 27) and is spoken in the municipality of the Saterland (Sfrs. Seelterlound), which is located in the federal state of Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany.

Kumiai (Kumeyaay, formerly known as Diegueño; ISO code: DIH) is an endangered Yuman language of the Delta-California subgroup spoken across the Mexico–US border by approximately 150 people (Golla 2011). There are two major sets of Kumiai varieties: Northern Kumiai (Ipai/’Iipay) and Southern Kumiai (Tipai/Tiipay) (Golla 2011). A third cluster of varieties, located in southeastern San Diego County, is proposed in Langdon (1991) and Miller (2001). The speech illustrated below is representative of Ja’a, a Southern Kumiai dialect spoken in Juntas de Nejí, Baja California, Mexico (see Figure 1 below). There are currently only four fluent speakers of Ja’a Kumiai (Miller 2016b). Recordings were made over a six-month period with a 48-year-old female speaker born and raised in Juntas de Nejí. Quantitative data reported in this paper are taken from a subset of the current corpus, from recordings made with the speaker in a soundproof booth. Only the speech of this single speaker is reported here given the severe endangerment of the language.

Umbuygamu is a Pama-Nyungan language of the east coast of Cape York Peninsula, in the northeast of Australia. Genetically, the language belongs to the Lamalamic subgroup (Laycock 1969, Rigsby 1997) of Paman languages, themselves a subgroup of Pama-Nyungan (as proposed by Hale 1964, 1966; see also Bowern & Atkinson 2012). Umbuygamu is the language of three clans at the southern end of Princess Charlotte Bay, about halfway up the east coast of Cape York Peninsula. Their estates are centred on a lagoon called Emanha (or Dinner Hole in English); they extend inland into the upper Running Creek system, and include the Cliff Islands group along the coast; see Rigsby 1992 for more details, and Verstraete & Rigsby (2015: 2) for a map of the region and its languages. Neighbouring languages are the Middle Paman language Umpithamu, along the coast to the north (see, for instance, Verstraete 2010, 2012) and two Lamalamic languages, Rimanggudinhma to the southwest (located inland; Godman 1993, Sommer 1999b), and Lamalama to the southeast (along the coast; Sommer 1999a).

Mbarrumbathama is a clan-named variety of Lamalama, a language of Cape York Peninsula, in the northeast of Australia. Together with Umbuygamu (Ogilvie 1994, Sommer 1998, Verstraete 2017) and Rimanggudinhma (Godman 1993), Lamalama forms the Lamalamic subgroup of Paman languages (Laycock 1969, Rigsby 1997, Verstraete 2018), themselves a subgroup of Pama-Nyungan (Hale 1964, 1966; see also Bowern & Atkinson 2012). The language is no longer spoken, but it is traditionally associated with about 20 clans (as reconstructed by Rigsby 1999, 2014) belonging to the southern shores of Princess Charlotte Bay, on the east coast of Cape York Peninsula (see Figure 1). The clans’ estates are mainly coastal, extending from the Normanby River mouth in the east to about 10 km west of the North Kennedy River mouth, but they also include some inland estates (see Rigsby 1992: 356).