The vowels /i/ and /I/ are not contrastive before /r/ in American English, and the phonetics literature is equivocal about which symbol to use for the nucleus in words such as beer. Similarly /e/ and /ε/ are not contrastive before /r/, and the literature contains varied references to one or the other in words such as bear. The purpose of this study was to investigate these vowels by acoustic measurements, discriminant analyses, and listening tests. Eleven men and ten women residing in southern Michigan recorded /r/-final monosyllables (beer, bear, hear, hair), as well as words containing /i, I e, ε with other finals, such as beet, bit, bait, bet. Acoustic measurements included the first three formants at steady state. The high front vowel in /r/-final syllables (beer, hear) showed formant values intermediate between /i/ and /I/, but closer to /i/, and the mid front vowel (in bear and hair) was intermediate between /e/ and /ε/, but closer to /e/. Discriminant analysis using the first three formants and listening tests using 60 ms vowel excerpts yielded results consistent with the idea that the pre-/r/ vowels are acoustically intermediate between their tense and lax neighbors but resemble /i/ and /e/ more closely than /I/ and /ε/.

This study investigates some acoustic characteristics of Norwegian /ç/ and /[small Esh]/ as spoken by two groups of young people. Whereas the first group distinguished between the two fricatives in production, the other speakers showed articulatory merging, producing both /ç/ and /[small Esh]/ as [[small Esh]]. Parameters measured were duration and relative rms amplitude of the fricative and four spectral properties, viz. lower and upper edge and peak frequency, as well as centre of gravity. The results show that the two fricatives are mainly distinguished by their spectral properties. For younger speakers with a merged pronunciation, merging is not fully completed.

The set of vowel symbols introduced by Gimson in 1977 into the Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary for the representation of British pronunciation became so widely used that for two decades an unprecedented harmony reigned and an ever wider non-specialist audience became accustomed to accept that pronunciations should be presented to them via the International Phonetic Alphabet in this form. This unity was disrupted by the publication by one branch of the Oxford University Press of important reference books in which one in four of the Gimson twenty vowel-phoneme symbols were changed. The grounds for welcoming or deprecating each of these changes are discussed.

Computationally testable models in linguistics focus on declaring data structures and providing exemplar derivations. This paper outlines a comprehensive model of speech production which goes beyond derivations to show how actual instances of utterances can be formally characterised. Utterances contain a wealth of detail beyond the underlying utterance plan: some of this is a function of the mechanism itself (e.g. coarticulation) and some is the result of carefully supervised control. We develop the notion of managed or supervised speech production to enable the inclusion of EXPRESSIVE content in speech. Building on earlier work the Cognitive Phonetics Agent bridges the gap between the physical and cognitive processes in phonetics by controlling the way phonologically determined utterance plans are phonetically rendered in detail. The model is illustrated using different types of data structure which occur in speech, concentrating in particular on an XML characterisation of appropriate structures. We trace a simple utterance through from its phonological plan to a detailed intrinsic allophonic representation to show how stages in the model work.

This paper reports how stress and the position of the /ns/ cluster in polysyllabic words affect [t] epenthesis in four different environments: (1) word-medial after a stressed vowel (e.g. 'cen.sus vs. 'dentsus); (2) word-final after a stressed vowel (e.g. in.'tense vs. in'tents); (3) word-medial after a stressless vowel (e.g. con.'sent vs. blunt 'say.ing); and (4) word-final after a stressless vowel (e.g. 'sci.ence vs. 'con.tents). Analysis of stop closure durations in experimental sentences read by seven American English speakers reveals that position, not stress, is the most important factor in [t] epenthesis: final position (e.g. science and intense) favors epenthesis. Stress is found to have an effect on stop closure durations in the way it interacted with word-position – i.e. for the final /ns/ cluster, stress immediately before it disfavors epenthesis (e.g. intense). The underlying /t/ is shown to be not significantly longer than the epenthetic [t]. Measurements from polysyllabic words in the TIMIT corpus corroborate the experimental results that word-final position favors epenthesis and that stress does not correlate with epenthesis. In the TIMIT data, however, underlying /t/ was significantly longer than epenthetic [t].

Standard Eastern Armenian has a three-way VOT contrast among its oral stop series. While it is rare for such a 3-way contrast to be preserved in final position, Standard Eastern Armenian is claimed to do just this (Khachaturian 1988; Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996; Vaux 1998). This phenomenon provides an ideal opportunity to explore how prosodic structure influences the realization of a complex and delicate system of contrast maintained by temporal and saliency distinctions. The cues to this contrast, including VOT, closure duration, and burst amplitude, are examined in a variety of segmental and prosodic environments. The experiment evaluates effects of intonation phrase final, intermediate phrase final, word final, and syllable final positions. We find that the 3-way VOT contrast is maintained in those prosodic domains in which the stop consonants are final. Speakers make significant VOT distinctions among the target consonants within the same boundary condition, and across prosodic conditions, larger prosodic domains exhibit longer VOT values.

Starting with an r that was already ambiguous, the IPA added new symbols and diacritics without arriving at a comprehensive treatment of rhotics. The results have been ad hoc solutions and potential confusion for languages such as Spanish, in which these need to be distinguished. A few modifications of the IPA diacritic system would suffice in order to capture the different types.

The influence of consonant aspiration on the F0 contours of tones in Mandarin Chinese was tested in continuous speech by reference to a minimal pair of syllables, /ta/ and /tha/, which differ only in terms of aspiration. It was found that, consonant aspiration affects the fundamental frequency (F0) of the following vowel. The onset F0 of a tone is higher following unaspirated consonants than following aspirated consonants, and the magnitude of the differences are related to the tone itself as well as the preceding tone. The underlying mechanisms of this effect, as well as its interaction with other effects on F0 contours, are discussed.

This paper examines the phonetic typology of pharyngeal sounds and presents external articulatory evidence for the phonological shift from uvular ejectives to pharyngeals in the Nootka dialects of Nuuchahnulth, based on the theory of the function of the aryepiglottic laryngeal sphincter mechanism. The phonetic structure of postvelar sounds is evaluated laryngoscopically in Wakashan and in Salish (cross-linguistically) to explain the historical phonological change through articulatory data. The physiological evidence suggests that uvulars may acquire phonetic characteristics of pharyngeals by adding an extra gesture to an existing sound. We conclude that postvelars can increase in complexity incrementally and that the complex pharyngeals of Wakashan and Salish can be explained through an articulatory phonetic hierarchy. The evolution of epiglottal components in each of the two phonologies is accounted for by the adaptation of existing glottal and pharyngeal elements. Implications for phonology are that features such as [RTR] and nodes such as pharyngeal can be attributed to the action of the laryngeal sphincter mechanism.

In this paper we examine the realization of accentual prominence in downstep contexts (i.e. after another accented word) in the Northern Bizkaian Basque dialect of Lekeitio. Previous work has suggested that pitch is the primary correlate of accent in this language. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that in contexts where pitch differences are likely to be reduced or perhaps eliminated, duration will be recruited to convey accentual prominence. The results show that pitch-accents are reduced but not eliminated following other accents, including the context after a word with narrow focus. The reduced pitch excursions found in this context appear to reliably and consistently indicate the position of the accent. On the other hand, the participants in this study did not consistently employ duration to enhance the prominence of accented syllables (a durational effect was found for two out of five speakers). Given the robustness of the pitch cue in this language (always a fall from the accented syllable), even in contexts of downstep, other phonetic correlates of accent will be redundant, to the extent that they are used.

This article is an account of the intonation of a variety of Welsh English. The layman's perception of a South Wales ‘Valleys’ accent is that, along with many other Welsh accents of English, it has a highly tuneful intonation which is distinct from that in any other part of the British Isles. The article sets out to describe the phonetic features of the main intonational forms that contribute towards this ‘melody’. This is done with the aid of a modified ToBI transcription system and supporting acoustic readings, which together enable reference to both pitch movements and pitch levels at any point in the overall ‘tune’ of an intonational phrase. Most of the distinctive melody-forming features of the dialect are found to be connected with the different kinds of accent-contour occurring at non-final and final (‘nuclear’) accents, and the phonetic realisations of these accent-contours. Finally, some discussion takes place on what may be general discourse meanings associated with the different intonational forms described in the dialect.