This paper focuses on the spectral properties of anterior sibilant fricatives in Northern Peninsular Spanish, and sibilant-merging and non-merging varieties of Basque. Non-merging varieties of Basque have two voiceless anterior sibilant fricatives, characterized as apico-alveolar and lamino-alveolar. In other Basque varieties, however, these two phonemes have merged with varying results. Twenty-four

Ende (ISO639-3 code: kit) is a Pahoturi River language spoken by at least 600 (Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2019) and as many as 1000 (Dareda 2016) people in Western Province, Papua New Guinea, primarily in the villages of Limol, Malam, and Kinkin, as shown in Figure 1. The Pahoturi River family, which also includes the Agob, Em, Idi, Kawam, and Taeme language varieties, has not yet been demonstrated

The merger of post-alveolar /ʃ/ and palatal /ç/ into alveolopalatal /ɕ/ has recently gained growing interest in sociophonetic research, especially in the Middle German dialect area. In Luxembourgish, a Continental West Germanic language, the sound change has been linked to age differences, while its origins remain unclear. Two studies with a regional focus are presented in this paper. The first study

Diphthongs have a dynamic formant structure. Nevertheless, many quantitative studies of diphthongs are based on measurements at only two points, somewhere in the nucleus and somewhere in the glide. The question arises as to whether analyses based on values at only two points provide an adequate understanding of the dynamics of diphthongs. Wieling (2018) mentions the analysis of /aɪ/ raising in Chicago

This study examines trans-vocalic CVC coarticulation of the coronal (dental, alveolar, retroflex and (alveo-)palatal) stop, nasal and lateral consonants of Arrernte, an Aboriginal language of Central Australia, using electro-palatographic (EPG) recordings of continuous speech. Coronal consonants are known to be more coarticulatorily resistant than peripheral consonants such as bilabials and velars

Intonation languages such as English and German have been described as having, among others, ‘realizational’ differences with regard to their intonation (Ladd 1996). One such difference is whether phrase-final pitch contours that lack sufficient segmental material to be realized naturally are subjected to truncation or compression. The current investigation examines this question in Lebanese Arabic

This paper reports an automatic data-driven analysis for describing prototypical intonation patterns, particularly suitable for initial stages of prosodic research and language description. The approach has several advantages over traditional ways to investigate intonation, such as the applicability to spontaneous speech, language- and domain-independency, and the potential of revealing meaningful

The intonation of yes–no questions in Luganda (Bantu, Uganda) has only been sketched in passing. Hyman states that Luganda yes–no questions are marked by a ‘super-high tone’ immediately following the last lexical high tone in the sentence, but there is little agreement in the literature about the intonation of yes–no questions if there is no lexical high tone in the sentence. To clarify the differences

In this Illustration we describe the Cwyzhy (also Tswydzhy) dialect of Abkhaz, the native language of the third author. In Cwyzhy, the language Abkhaz is called /арʰsаʃʷа/ [ˈаpʰsæʃᶣæ] аҧсашəа. Abkhaz (ISO-639-3 abk) belongs to the Northwest Caucasian family of languages, and the Abkhaz dialects are related as shown in (1) (adapted from Chirikba 2012: 36):

The Ikema dialect of Miyako Island in Okinawa, Japan, has typologically rare word-initial and voiced geminate obstruents (e.g. /vva/ ‘you’, /ffa/ ‘child’, /tta/ ‘tongue’, /badda/ ‘side’). These sounds are marked in two ways: Voicing through geminate obstruents is hard to produce and initial voiceless plosives seem to be difficult to perceive. This study investigated real-time magnetic resonance imaging

Velar lateral sounds are rare and their acoustics and contextual effects are understudied. Positional variants of velar laterals are also rarely reported. This paper documents a previously unknown allophony pattern of the velar lateral in Mee (Trans New Guinea; Indonesia), based on an elicitation study with two speakers and a controlled set of recordings from one of the speakers. Our main dataset included

In a variety of Sasak called Ampenan Sasak in this paper, traditional documentation and analytical methods based on auditory perception reveal allophonic patterns in alternations of height among mid-vowels. High mid-vowels occur in final syllables ending in [ʔ] or no-coda (e.g. [tokoʔ] ‘fish species native to Lombok’) while low mid-vowels occur in final syllables ending in all other consonants (e.g

This paper looks at the use of /r/-sandhi in the speech of Queen Elizabeth II. Potential contexts of /r/-sandhi were identified and analysed for the presence or absence of rhoticity and glottalisation in a corpus of Christmas speeches over a period of seven decades. The results show that the Queen avoids intrusive /r/ altogether but that she uses linking /r/ in most potential cases, that glottalisation

Data from about one hundred languages reveal that, in spite of resulting typically from articulatory reduction of peripheral vowels in unstressed position, full schwa may also occur in stressed position in stress languages and in unreduced syllables in languages lacking stress. Formant frequency data reveal that this vowel is mid central, though somewhat shifted to the mid back unrounded area (particularly

Despite being one of the official languages in Switzerland, the phonetic properties of Swiss Standard German (SSG) have been studied insufficiently. Regarding Alemannic (ALM) dialects, most of the available phonetic studies have dealt with consonants rather than vowels. To counteract this general lack of research, this study investigates the long-vowel inventories of four ALM dialects as well as their

Ladin (ISO 639-3: lld) is a Romance language spoken in the Italian Central-Eastern Alps by a community of about 30,000 speakers (Dell’Aquila 2010). The classification of Ladin within Western Romance has been the subject of a long-lasting scientific and at times ideological debate, particularly because at the end of the 19th century the region was contested between the new-born Italian state and the

Gaza City, with a population of over half a million residents, is the largest urban center and de-facto capital of the Gaza Strip, which itself has a total population of over 1.8 million. As of 2018, it is estimated that at least 1.3 million of the residents of the Gaza Strip are Palestinian refugees from other areas in historic Palestine, having fled to Gaza after the creation of the State of Israel

Ambel (ISO 639-3: wgo) is an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 1600 people on the island of Waigeo in the Raja Ampat archipelago (West Papua province, Indonesia). Within Austronesian, Ambel belongs to the South Halmahera-West New Guinea (SHWNG) subbranch (see Blust 1978); within SHWNG, Ambel is classified as a Raja Ampat–South Halmahera language (RASH; Remijsen 2001:32–37; Kamholz 2014)

Dàgáárè /dàgááɹɪ̀/ (ISO 639-3) is a Mabia language (Bodomo 1997) of Niger-Congo family. It is spoken by about 1.5 million The map in Figure 1 shows the areas, in northwestern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso, where Dàgáárè is spoken predominantly. There are four broad dialects of Dàgáárè. These include Northern Dàgáárè [dàgàɹà], spoken in Lawra /lóɹáː/, Nandom /nàndɔ̀ː/ and Burkina Faso; Southern Dàgáárè

The variety described here is Pontic Greek (ISO 639 name: pnt), and specifically the variety that originates from Trapezounta in Asia Minor (present-day Trabzon in Turkey) as spoken today in Etoloakarnania, Greece by second-generation refugees. The term ‘Pontic Greek’ (in Greek: ) was originally an etic term, while Pontians called their language by other names, mainly [ɾoˈmeika] ‘Romeika’ (Sitaridou

Studies have shown that the voice onset time (VOT) of alveolo-palatal affricates is the longest, followed by velars, dental/alveolars, and bilabials. In a reciprocal pattern, closure duration is the longest for bilabials, followed by dental/alveolars, and then velars. Longer VOT is also associated with high and front vowels and tones with rising components. Moreover, the VOT of voiceless unaspirated

Khongso /kʰɔŋ˧˩so˧˩/ is an SVO Tibeto-Burman language spoken by between two and three thousand speakers in Paletwa Township, Southern Chin State, Myanmar (Dryer 2008, Wright 2009). The speakers live in 17 villages primarily along the Michaung River (see Figure 1).1 Khongso is mutually intelligible with Anu, which has a population of 700 and is spoken west of the Khongso area (So-Hartmann 1988, Wright

In the description of German phonology, two distinct phonetic symbols are currently recommended for the transcription of the vowels [a] (a central low vowel, phonemically /a/) and [ɐ] (phonemically /əʁ/) in word-final, unstressed positions. The present study examines whether differences between these two vowels exist in production and perception of Standard German speakers from the north of Germany

Saraiki (ISO 639-3:skr) is an Indo-Aryan language widely used in Pakistan and India (Bashir, Conners & Hefright 2019). The variety described here is Central Saraiki, spoken in the districts of Multan, Muzaffargarh, Bahawalpur and the northern parts of Dera Ghazi Khan in Pakistan, which form the largest of the Saraiki-speaking areas.1 Geographically, Pakistan is divided into four provinces, Punjab,

Eastern Andalusian Spanish (henceforth EAS), is spoken in the east of Andalusia, the southernmost autonomous region of Spain. EAS is most similar to Western Andalusian Spanish (WAS) and to Murcian Spanish, the latter spoken in the autonomous region of Murcia, immediately to the east of Andalusia, and it shares some phonetic traits with EAS, such as vowel lowering. Geographically, Eastern Andalusia

Zhushan Mandarin () is a dialect of Mandarin Chinese (ISO 639-3; code: cmn) spoken in the Zhushan county (), which belongs to the city of Shiyan () in Hubei Province (), the People’s Republic of China. As shown in Figure 1, the county borders the city of Chongqing () to the south and Shaanxi Province () to the north. It has an area of 3,586 km² and a population of about 4.7 million residents (Hubei

Diphthongization has a long history in Quebec French. In this variety, lengthened vowels have the potential to be diphthongized. However, one vowel stands out, as it is always long and seems particularly inclined to be diphthongal: the fête vowel. While it has been much studied over the years, some uncertainties remain in the literature, especially whether length or quality primarily distinguishes

Lili Wu Chinese () is a Wu dialect (; ISO 639-3; code: wuu) spoken by approximately 38,000 people who reside in the town of Lili (), one of the ten major towns in the Wujiang district (). The Wujiang district belongs to the prefectural-level municipality of Suzhou city () in Jiangsu province (), the People’s Republic of China. It is located at the juncture area of the city of Shanghai (), the city

Phonetic aspects of many languages have been documented, though the breadth and focus of such documentation varies substantially. In this survey, phonetic aspects (here called ‘categories’) that are typically reported were assessed in three English-language collections – the Illustrations of the IPA from the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, articles from the Journal of Phonetics,

Belarusian (ISO 639-3 BEL) is an Eastern Slavic language spoken by roughly seven million people in the Republic of Belarus (Zaprudski 2007, Census of the Republic of Belarus 2009), a land-locked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest (Figure 1). Within the Belarusian language, the two main

Presently there is no consensus regarding the interpretation and analysis of the stress system of Moroccan Arabic. This paper tests whether the acoustic realisation of syllables support one widely adopted interpretation of lexical stress, according to which stress is either penultimate or final depending on syllable weight. The experiment reports on word-initial syllables that differ in presumed stress

Kalasha (ISO 639-3: kls), also known as Kalashamon, is a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language spoken in Chitral District of Khyber Pakhtunkwa Province in northern Pakistan, primarily in the valleys of Bumburet, Rumbur, Urtsun, and Birir, as shown in Figure 1. The number of speakers is estimated between 3000 and 5000. The Ethnologue classifies the language status as ‘vigorous’ (Eberhard, Simons & Fennig

In the current study, we explore the factors underlying the well-known difficulty in acoustic classification of front nonsibilant fricatives (Maniwa, Jongman & Wade 2009, McMurray & Jongman 2011) by applying a novel classification method to the production of Greek speakers. The Greek fricative inventory [f v θ ð s z ç ʝ x ɣ] includes voiced and voiceless segments from five distinct places of articulation

Kazakh (ISO 639-3, kaz) is a Kipchak (Northwestern) Turkic language with approximately ten million speakers (Muhamedowa 2015). While the majority of Kazakh speakers live in the Republic of Kazakhstan, significant Kazakh-speaking populations exist throughout Central Asia. See Figure 1 for a map of the region. Kazakh spoken in Kazakhstan is described as having three or four dialects, but many researchers

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],

Bajau is spoken as the primary language from the Philippines to Borneo to eastern Indonesia, by both nomadic and settled communities. It is also known as Badjaw, Badjo, Bajao, Bajo, Bayo, Gaj, Indonesian Bajaw, Orang Laut, Sama, and Terijene; see Simons & Fennig 2017. Glottolog.org lists ‘Indonesian Bajau’ as a language spoken on the south-eastern coast of Sulawesi, glottocode indo1317 and ISO 639-3

Khuzestani Arabic (ISO 639-3) is a minority language spoken in the southern west of Iran, in Khuzestan province (see Figure 1). The majority of its speakers live in Ahwaz, Howeyzeh, Bostan, Susangerd, Shush, Abadan, Khorramshahr, Shadegan, Hamidiyeh (Balawi & Khezri 2014: 107), Karun, and Bawi. According to Blanc (1964: 6), this variety of Arabic is closely related to the Gelet subgroup of Mesopotamian

Urarina (ISO 639-3, code ura – Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016) is an Amazonian language isolate spoken in the Loreto Region of Peru. Most Urarina communities are located on the banks of the rivers Corrientes, Chambira and Urituyacu, which are tributaries of the Marañon River, which in turn is the mainstem source of the Amazon River. Figure 1 shows the map of Peru and the location of the Urarina territory

Scottish Gaelic is a minority language of Scotland spoken by approximately 58,000 people, or 1% of the Scottish population (speaker numbers from the 2011 Census available in National Records of Scotland 2015). Here, we refer to the language as ‘Gaelic’, pronounced in British English as /ɡalɪk/, as is customary within the Gaelic-speaking community. In Gaelic, the language is referred to as Gàidhlig

The majority of studies on phonation types have focused on low vowels due to the minimal effects of their first formant on harmonic amplitude. In studies of multiple vowel qualities, reports on the relationship between vowel and voice quality are mixed: some show similar formant frequencies across phonation types (e.g. Abramson, Nye & Luangthongkum 2007, Khan 2012), while others show different formant

Malagasy is the westernmost Austronesian language and belongs to the South East Barito subgroup of the Western Malayo-Polynesian subfamily (Dahl 1988, Rasoloson & Rubino 2005). Dahl (1951) presents widely-accepted evidence that Malagasy is most closely related to the Indonesian language Ma’anyan of Kalimantan (South Borneo). The term Malagasy refers to a macrolanguage (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2014)

A’ingae (also known as Cofán or Kofán) is a language isolate spoken by approximately 1,500 people in 13 communities in Ecuador and Colombia (Figure 1). Traditionally, the A’i (speakers of A’ingae) lived in the Andean foothills, but over the past century they have migrated down the Aguarico and San Miguel rivers, founding communities at Dureno and Zábalo, where the language is most widely spoken. This

The IPA currently does not specify how to represent prenasalization, preglottalization or preaspiration. We first review some current transcription practices, and phonetic and phonological literature bearing on the unitary status of prenasalized, preglottalized and preaspirated segments. We then propose that the IPA adopt superscript diacritics placed before a base symbol for these three phenomena

Glottalisation functions as a cue to coda stop voicelessness in many varieties of English, occurring most commonly for alveolar stops, although varieties differ according to the context and frequency with which glottalisation is used. In Australian English, younger speakers glottalise voiceless coda stops at much higher rates than older speakers suggesting a recent change to the variety, yet this change

This paper outlines a theoretical approach to speech sound systems based on the notion of phonological potentials: physical ‘pressures’ or biases that give rise to discrete structure and the tendencies associated with this structure that arise from the physical nature of speech sound systems. We apply this approach to a poorly understood area of phonology – phenomena of the lower vocal tract (LVT)

Previous research has shown that pre-aspiration can be either a phonemic or variable linguistic feature susceptible to linguistic and extra-linguistic influences. In the case of Welsh, previous exploratory work has found the presence of pre-aspiration (Ball 1984; Morris 2010; Iosad Forthcoming; Spooner 2016), but the phonetic and phonological properties of this feature and its sociophonetic patterning

Tongan (lea fakatonga, ISO 639-3 code ton) is a Polynesian language spoken mainly in Tonga, where it is one of two official languages (with English). There are about 104,000 speakers of the language in Tonga, with nearly 80,000 additional speakers elsewhere (Simons & Fennig 2017). It is most closely related to Niuean, and more distantly related to West Polynesian languages (such as Tokelauan and Samoan)

Malacca Portuguese Creole (MPC) (ISO 639-3; code: mcm), popularly known as Malacca Portuguese or locally as (Papiá) Cristang, belongs to the group of Portuguese-lexified creoles of (South)east Asia, which includes the extinct varieties of Batavia/Tugu (Maurer 2013) and Bidau, East Timor (Baxter 1990), and the moribund variety of Macau (Baxter 2009). MPC has its origins in the Portuguese presence in

Shawi1 is the language of the indigenous Shawi/Chayahuita people in Northwestern Amazonia, Peru. It belongs to the Kawapanan language family, together with its moribund sister language, Shiwilu. It is spoken by about 21,000 speakers (see Rojas-Berscia 2013) in the provinces of Alto Amazonas and Datem del Marañón in the region of Loreto and in the northern part of the region of San Martín, being one

This paper presents an acoustic study of the vowel system of Southern Ute, a Southern Numic Uto-Aztecan language spoken in southwestern Colorado. Previous auditory accounts proposed an inventory of five vowel phonemes that participate in three allophonic processes and contrast in length and stress. We investigate how the vowels are realized at the phonetic level by analyzing F1, F2, duration, spectral

Buenos Aires Spanish (BAS) is well known for the sound change that led the palatal obstruent to become a post-alveolar fricative. However, that obstruent is not the only palatal phoneme undergoing sound change in BAS. The present study investigates the production of /ɲ/ and /nj/ in BAS, which have been reported as merging (Malmberg 1950). Previous research suggests that some speakers produce a ‘traditional’

Sardinian is a Romance language spoken almost exclusively on the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Sardinian and Italian are not mutually intelligible; there is considerable structural distance between the two linguistic systems, at all linguistic levels (Loporcaro 2009: 162–171).

While Mixtec languages are well-known for their tonal systems, there remains relatively little work focusing on their consonant inventories. This paper provides an in-depth phonetic description of the consonant system of the Yoloxóchitl Mixtec language (Oto-Manguean, ISO 639-3 code xty), a Guerrero Mixtec variety. The language possesses a number of contrasts common among Mixtec languages, such as voiceless

Upper Necaxa Totonac is a Totonacan language spoken in the Necaxa River valley in the Sierra Norte of Puebla State, Mexico. While the Totonacan languages historically have three phonemic vowel qualities, the Upper Necaxa system consists of five vowels that contrast length and laryngealization. With acoustic data from six native speakers from the Totonacan communities of Patla and Chicontla, we explore

Bininj Kunwok (BKw), a language spoken in Northern Australia, restricts the degree of anticipatory nasalization, as suggested by previous aerodynamic and acoustic analyses (Butcher 1999). The current study uses aerodynamic measurements of speech to investigate patterns of nasalization and nasal articulation in Bininj Kunwok to compare with Australian languages more generally. The role of nasal coarticulation

This paper investigates the articulation of approximant /ɹ/ in New Zealand English (NZE), and tests whether the patterns documented for rhotic varieties of English hold in a non-rhotic dialect. Midsagittal ultrasound data for 62 speakers producing 13 tokens of /ɹ/ in various phonetic environments were categorized according to the taxonomy by Delattre & Freeman (1968), and semi-automatically traced

IPAtranscriptor is a tool for creating narrow phonetic transcriptions. As it connects to the computer's default text-to-speech engine on demand, the program can be used not only by sighted but also by partially sighted and blind individuals. Sighted users can choose whether they prefer the mouse or the keyboard as their input device. In contrast to other programs, the full set of symbols and diacritics

The question of whether intonation contours directly signal meaning is an old one. We revisit this question using vocatives in Colombian Spanish (Bogotá). We recorded speakers' productions in three pragmatic conditions – greeting, confirmation-seeking, and reprimand – and compared proper names (vocatives) to situation-specific one-word utterances, such as hola 'hello' (non-vocatives). Intonational

This study reports on non-durational acoustic correlates of typologically rare word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay (KM) by focusing on two acoustic parameters – amplitude and f0. Given the unusual characteristics of the word-initial consonant contrast and its potential maintenance in domain-initial environments, this study sets to examine the extent to which amplitude and f0 can potentially

Among phoneticians, the Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA) is one of the most widely used methods for the componential assessment of voice quality. Whether the ultimate goal of the VPA evaluation is the comparative description of languages or the characterization of an individual speaker, the VPA protocol shows great potential for different research areas of speech communication. However, its use is not