We present the first ultrasound analysis of the secondary palatalization contrast in Irish, analyzing data from five speakers from the Connemara dialect group. Word-initial /pʲ(bʲ) pˠ(bˠ) tʲ tˠ kʲ kˠ fʲ fˠ sʲ sˠ xʲ xˠ/ are analyzed in the context of /iː uː/. We find, first, that tongue body position robustly distinguishes palatalized from velarized consonants, across place of articulation, manner, and vowel place contexts, with palatalized consonants having fronter and/or higher tongue body realizations than their velarized counterparts. This conclusion holds equally for labial consonants, contrary to some previous descriptive claims. Second, the nature and degree of palatalization and velarization depend in systematic ways on consonant place and manner. In coronal consonants, for example, velarization is weaker or absent. Third, the Irish consonants examined resist coarticulation in backness with a following vowel. In all of these respects Irish palatalization is remarkably similar to that of Russian. Our results also support an independent role for pharyngeal cavity expansion/retraction in the production of the palatalization contrast. Finally, we discuss preliminary findings on the dynamics of the secondary articulation gestures. Our use of principal component analysis (PCA) in reaching these findings is also of interest, since PCA has not been employed a great deal in analyses of tongue body movement.

A method is demonstrated for creating density-equalizing maps of IPA consonant and vowel charts, where the size of a cell in the chart reflects information such as the crosslinguistic frequency of the consonant or vowel. Transforming the IPA charts in such a way allows the visualization of interactions between phonetic features. Density-equalizing maps are used to illustrate a range of facts about consonant and vowel inventories, including the frequency of consonants and vowels and the frequency of common diacritics, and to illustrate the frequency of deletion and epenthesis involving particular consonants and vowels. Solutions are proposed for issues involving genealogical sampling, counting pairs of very similar phones, and counting diacritics in relation to basic symbols.

The impetus for this special issue was an all-day event at the 2015 meeting of the International Pragmatics Association: The Panel on Prosodic Constructions in Dialog. This event had several motivations: (i) we have enormous data sets and tools to process them, but as a field we lack clear roadmaps for how to exploit these sets and tools to improve our understanding; (ii) we know that prosody is more than just the single stream of intonation, but we find it hard to accurately describe multistream phenomena; (iii) we have observed how prosody serves many dialog and interactional functions, but cannot yet really model how; and (iv) we have various schools of thought, each wielding its own methods, but we have difficulty reconciling and connecting their various insights.

This paper explores phrase-length-related alternations in the association of tones to positions in metrical structure in two melodic constructions of Spanish. An imitation-and-completion task eliciting (a) the low–falling–rising contour and (b) the circumflex contour on intonation phrases (IPs) of one, two, and three prosodic words revealed that, although the focus structure and pragmatic context is constant across conditions, phrases containing one prosodic word differ in their nuclear (i.e. final) pitch accents and edge tones from phrases containing more than one prosodic word. For contour (a), short intonation phrases (e.g. [Manolo]IP) were produced with a low accent followed by a high edge tone (L* H% in ToBI notation), whereas longer phrases (e.g. [El hermano de la amiga de Manolo]IP ‘Manolo's friend's brother’) had a low accent on the first stressed syllable, a rising accent on the last stressed syllable, and a low edge tone (L* L+H* L%). For contour (b), short phrases were produced with a high–rise (L+H* ¡H%), whereas longer phrases were produced with an initial accentual rise followed by an upstepped rise–fall (L+H* ¡H* L%). These findings imply that the common practice of describing the structure of intonation contours as consisting of a constant nuclear pitch accent and following edge tone is not adequate for modeling Spanish intonation. To capture the observed melodic alternations, we argue for clearer separation between tones and metrical structure, whereby intonational tones do not necessarily have an intrinsic culminative or delimitative function (i.e. as pitch accents or as edge tones). Instead, this function results from melody-specific principles of tonal–metrical association.

Acoustic analysis of word-list and sentence data from a database of spoken New Zealand English is used to address the suggestion that a number of vowel contrasts in this variety are moving towards a quantity-based distinction. Data from 73 speakers across three age groups and two sexes are analysed, for a total of almost 6,000 vowel tokens. The move to a quantity distinction is confirmed for the strut‒start contrast. In the case of dress and fleece, younger and female speakers show greater overlap of the two vowels but also stronger diphthongisation of fleece. The data also confirm the fronting of foot away from thought and towards goose, but with no evident adjustment in durational contrasts or in the diphthongisation of either long vowel. Kit is becoming increasingly centralised, especially in the speech of young women, and is as a consequence becoming more distinct from nurse. The findings are discussed in the context of the system of vowel contrasts in this variety.

This paper describes changes to the extIPA (Extensions to the IPA) symbol set, the motivation for these changes, and areas where future changes by the IPA might be helpful to clinical transcribers. The extIPA symbol set was introduced some twenty-five years ago. Since that time, some minor changes have been introduced to the extIPA chart but no major rearrangement has been attempted. The 2010 Oslo meeting of ICPLA (International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association) started a revision of the extIPA chart, and this process was recently completed. A revised extIPA chart was approved at the 2016 ICPLA meeting. The revision involved the addition, modification and removal of categories and symbols. All changes derive from the need to denote sounds encountered in disordered speech that were not covered by the original chart.

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 analyses showed no direct one-to-one correspondence between the pragmatic conditions and intonation contours: (a) for vocatives, e.g. a rising–falling contour occurred in both greetings and reprimands; and (b) for non-vocatives, e.g. a step-down contour (a.k.a. calling contour) occurred in both greeting and confirmation-seeking conditions. Looking beyond intonation to consider other phonetic variables – spectral tilt, duration, alignment of tonal targets, f0-range, f0-slope – the results showed that the intonation contours that occurred in more than one pragmatic condition differed in phonetic realisation, e.g. rising–falling vocatives showed differences in f0-range of the rise and spectral tilt. However, the corresponding non-vocatives did not show the same differences. Furthermore, vocatives in greeting contexts were realised differently from non-vocatives in greeting contexts. In sum, the pragmatic condition affects the prosodic realisation of (non-)vocatives, but the relationship is complex. The results are discussed in the light of prosodic constructions, leading to the conclusion that the prosodic realisation of vocatives and non-vocatives in Bogotá Colombian Spanish cannot be easily modelled by prosodic constructions.

This study presents a detailed acoustic analysis of phonation in voiceless obstruents in American English (AE) to investigate the acoustic consequences of the laryngeal timing that has been reported in the literature. The current study examines the appearance of phonation in voiceless obstruents in a corpus of read speech with 37 AE speakers. Linguistic factors such as phrase and word position, stress, and the preceding phoneme are examined and are shown to condition the presence and degree of phonation during the constriction period of stops and fricatives. The amount of phonation present is further analyzed by characterizing where in the constriction interval phonation appears. Carryover phonation (or bleed) from a preceding sonorant is most common for stops, while a trough pattern (phonation that dies out and then begins again before the end of the closure) is more prevalent for fricatives. These acoustic patterns, together with previous reports of laryngeal articulation and air pressure measures, have implications for the representation of laryngeal timing in a gestural phonology framework.

The ‘voice quality symbols’ (VoQS) transcription system for voice quality was introduced some 20 years ago, and no major revision has been undertaken since then. In this account we describe the first major revision of the VoQS chart, these changes being mostly in the form of additions to the section on phonation types, but include also changes to the layout of the supralaryngeal settings section. These reflect recent developments in the understanding of the physiological underpinnings of sounds produced in the larynx including certain phonation types.

Using a simulated telephone conversation task, we elicited sarcastic production in different utterance types (i.e. declaratives, tag questions and wh-exclamatives from native speakers of the southern variety of British English. Unlike previous studies which focus on static prosodic measurements at the utterance level (e.g. mean pitch, pitch span, intensity), we examined both static prosodic measurements and continuous changes in contour shape in the semantically most important words (or key words) of the sarcastic utterances and their counterparts in the sincere utterances. To this end, we adopted Functional Data Analysis to model pitch variation as contours and represent the contours as continuous function in statistical analysis. We found that sarcasm and sincerity are prosodically distinguishable in the key words alone. The key words in sarcastic utterances are realised with a longer duration and a flatter fall than their counterparts in sincere utterances regardless of utterance type and speaker gender. These results are compatible with previous reports on the use of a smaller pitch span and a slower speech rate in sarcastic utterances than in sincere utterances in North American English. We also observed notable differences in the use of minimum pitch, maximum pitch and contour shape in different utterance types and in the use of mean pitch and duration by male and female speakers. Additionally, we found that the prosody of the key words in sarcastic utterances and their counterparts in sincere utterances has yielded useful predictors for the presence (or absence) of sarcasm in an utterance. Together, our results lend direct support to a key-word–based approach. However, the prosodic predictors included in our analysis alone can achieve only an accuracy of 70.4%, suggesting a need to examine additional prosodic parameters and prosody beyond the key words.

English is an official language in the Philippines, along with Filipino, a standardized register originally based on Tagalog (Gonzalez 1998). The Philippines were a Spanish colony for over three centuries, but when the Americans took control in 1898, they immediately implemented English instruction in schools (Gonzalez 2004). It became much more widespread among Filipinos than Spanish ever was, and by the late 1960s, Philippine English was recognized as a distinct, nativized variety (Llamzon 1969). It is widely spoken throughout the country as a second language, alongside Filipino and approximately 180 other languages (Lewis, Simmons & Fennig 2016). It is also spoken in the home by a small number of Filipinos, especially among the upper class in Metro Manila (Gonzalez 1983, 1989) and other urban areas. There is a large body of literature on Philippine English. However, relatively few studies have focused on its sound system. The most detailed phonological descriptions of this variety have been by Tayao (2004, 2008), although there have also been previous sketches (Llamzon 1969, 1997; Gonzalez 1984). There has been very little phonetic research on Philippine English, apart from some work describing the vowel system (Pillai, Manueli & Dumanig 2010, Cruz 2015).

In Ecuador there exists a dynamic language contact continuum between Urban Spanish and Rural Quichua. This study explores the effects of competing phonologies with an analysis of voice onset time (VOT) production in and across three varieties of Ecuadorian highland Spanish, Quichua, and Media Lengua. Media Lengua is a mixed language that contains Quichua systemic elements and a lexicon of Spanish origin. Because of this lexical-grammatical split, Media Lengua is considered the most central point along the language continuum. Native Quichua phonology has a single series of voiceless stops (/p/, /t/, and /k/), while Spanish shows a clear voicing contrast between stops in the same series. This study makes use of nearly 8,000 measurements from 69 participants to (i) document VOT production in the aforementioned language varieties and (ii) analyse the effects of borrowings on VOT. Results based on mixed effects models and multidimensional scaling suggest that the voicing contrast has entered both Media Lengua and Quichua through Spanish lexical borrowings. However, the VOT values of voiced stops in Media Lengua align with those of Rural and L2 Spanish while Quichua shows significantly longer prevoicing values, suggesting some degree of overshoot.

This paper is an acoustic study describing the vowel spaces of bilingual Quechua–Spanish speakers in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with a particular focus on the height of mid and high vowels, in order to explore longstanding questions about the nature of Quechua vowel categories. South Bolivian Quechua is generally described as phonemically trivocalic with high-vowel lowering in presence of uvular consonants, but there has been little acoustic study of vowel formant characteristics (Cerrón-Palomino 1987, Laime Ajacopa, Cazazola & Pairumani 2007). The current study quantifies previous impressionistic observations of the vowel system and describes the acoustic properties of the Quechua vowels. Eleven bilingual speakers of South Bolivian Quechua and Spanish were recorded in a Quechua translation task and a Spanish list-reading task. Results of Bayesian models indicate that Quechua high vowels do appear to undergo systematic lowering following uvular consonants, supporting earlier descriptions. The results also demonstrate that lowering is consistent throughout the duration of the vowels, challenging a purely coarticulatory motivation for the observed lowering pattern. The allophonic mid-vowels of Quechua and the phonemic high and mid vowels of Spanish also have formant characteristics that may differ from one another, providing evidence for the hypothesis that these bilingual speakers could potentially command two separate vowel systems with different bases of articulation. These findings are also relevant for questions related to the nature of three-vowel systems, and whether or not they may contain true mid-vowel allophones.

Zwara Berber is a variety of Nafusi (ISO 639-3; Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016) which belongs to the eastern Zenati group within northern Berber (where Berber is the scientific term for Tamazight), a branch of Afro-Asiatic. Zwara (Zuwārah, Zuwara, Zuāra, Zuara, Zouara) is a coastal city located at 32.9° N, 12.1° E in Libya. The speakers refer to themselves as /at ˈwil.lul/ (also /ajt ˈwil.lul/) ‘those of Willul’ and to their specific variety of the language as /t.ˈwil.lult/ ‘the language of Willul’. Having no official status during the Italian colonization of Libya and the first period after the country's independence in 1951, repression of the language became severe after the Cultural Revolution of 1973. Its propagation through teaching and the media fell under a constitutional ban on the denial of the Arab identity of the state, and qualified as such as treason, a capital offense. Until the revolution of 2011 (‘17 February’), the language was therefore not spoken in cultural, educational or governmental domains and could not be taught, printed or broadcast. The number of Tamazight speakers in Libya is estimated at 184,000 in Lewis et al. (2016) and at 560,000 by Chakel & Ferkal (2012). In the absence of a municipal register, the number of inhabitants in Zwara is uncertain. A conservative estimate is between 50,000 and 100,000, which is also the number of speakers of the Zwara variety. Other than through exposure by radio and television, children learn Arabic only from age six, when attending school. Speakers have variable L2 Arabic competence depending on exposure to the language.

The question of whether and how intonation patterns bear meanings is an old one, usually evaluated with reference to imagined or elicited speech. This study takes an interactional linguistic approach instead, examining intonation and meaning in naturally occurring interaction. The pattern considered here is a French intonation contour involving a salient initial accent and a low primary accent. This intonation pattern could be analysed as the so-called accent d'insistance, which is often said to have pragmatic meanings such as intensification and contrastive focus. This article analyses the uses of this contour in repeats. When used in repeats of an interlocutor's speech, the contour indicates unproblematic receipt of the repeated talk, making a confirming response optional, and contrasts with a final rise pattern used in repeats that initiate repair and request confirmation. However, in two other types of repetitions (self-repetition of a previously made assessment, and modified self-repetition for correction purposes), there is indeed interactional evidence supporting the argument that the contour helps convey the pragmatic meanings intensification and contrastive focus, respectively. It is argued that all of these meanings are achieved through the interplay of semiotic resources of several kinds (prosodic, verbal and sequential properties of talk), and that the contour itself has no inherent, context-independent meaning. The empirical findings presented suggest that the autonomy of intonation in the achievement of meaning has been overemphasised.

Hawaiian belongs to the Eastern Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family and is indigenous to the islands of Hawaiʻi (see Pawley 1966, Marck 2000, Wilson 2012). Hawaiian is also an endangered language. Not only was the native population decimated after contact with foreigners and foreign diseases but the language itself came under attack after the occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 (for more on Hawaiian history, see Coffman 2009, Sai 2011). Children were thereafter banned from speaking Hawaiian at school and indeed ‘physical punishment for using it could be harsh’ (Native Hawaiian Study Commission 1983: 196). In the decades that followed, Hawaiian was gradually replaced by an English-based creole (HCE or Hawaiʻi Creole English) for practically all Hawaiʻi-born children (Bikerton & Wilson 1987, also Sakoda & Siegel 2003). By the end of the 1970s, most surviving Hawaiian speakers were over 70 years old and fewer than 50 speakers were under the age of 18 (Kawaiʻaeʻa, Housman & Alencastre 2007).

Spanish is a Romance language spoken by approximately 405,638,110 speakers in the world (Lewis, Simons & Fenning 2013). Two major varieties are distinguished, Peninsular Spanish (Spain) and the Spanish spoken in the Americas, although it is also spoken natively in some parts of Africa, and in the United States. Spanish in the Americas comprises several dialects well differentiated by variations in the lexicon, phonology and, more importantly, in intonational patterns. In Mexico 86,211,000 (88% of the population) use Spanish as their first language, and a significant number of indigenous people have Spanish as their second language. The variety illustrated here is representative of the speech of the educated middle-class population from the metropolitan zone (three female and three male speakers in their 30s), which has as its center Mexico City, the most densely populated urban area in the country with more than 20 million people according to the Mexican National Census (INEGI 2010).

Niuean (ISO 639-3 code niu) is a Polynesian language spoken on the island of Niue, with an additional population of speakers living in New Zealand. Figure 1 indicates where Niue is located with respect to other neighboring islands in the South Pacific. The 2011 Niue Census of Populations and Households cited the number of individuals who had either basic or fluent spoken abilities at 1121 (with 101 non-speakers) (Statistics Niue 2012). English is the second most widely used language on the island. The 2013 New Zealand census cited 4548 individuals living in New Zealand who listed Niuean as one of their languages (Statistics New Zealand 2013). Niuean is classified as ‘definitely endangered’ by UNESCO (Moseley 2010). There are historically two distinct dialects: the older Motu dialect from the northern area, and the more recent Tafiti from the southern area. These dialect differences were once reflected in slight phonological differences in vocabulary items, but the differences have since eroded in the modern language (see McEwen 1970: ix). Previous research on Niuean phonetics and phonology includes a brief outline in Seiter (1980: x), two dictionaries (McEwen 1970, Sperlich 1997), and an article on vowel length (Rolle & Starks 2014). While these works provide an overview of some of the phenomena to be addressed below, this sketch attempts a more thorough documentation of the phonetic structures of Niuean, and provides novel acoustic and articulatory data from the language. Recordings accompanying this paper are of a male speaker (Mr. Krypton Okesene) and a female speaker (the second author).

Asturian (ISO 639), also known as Bable, Asturiano, Asturianu, Astur-Leonese or Leonese, is the vernacular language of Principality of Asturias, an autonomous community of just over one million inhabitants located in Northern Spain. Asturian is spoken by approximately 100,000 individuals within Asturias plus a few thousand more outside of this region. Historically, Astur-Leonese was spoken in parts of the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora and there are still remnants of it in Castilian Spanish. In addition, a variety of Asturian – called Mirandés – is currently spoken in the Portuguese province of Miranda de Douro, where it is a language co-official with Portuguese (Figure 1).