This study examines the utterance-initial prosodic marking of sarcasm in English and its perception in listeners who did and listeners who did not self-identify as being on the autism spectrum. We ask (i) whether speakers use prosody to mark sarcasm in the early, ‘pre-target’ portion of an utterance (that is, in the portion before a ‘target’ word most closely associated with the sarcastic intent occurs), (ii) whether individuals vary in how they mark sarcasm, (iii) whether listeners reliably recognize sarcasm from pre-target prosody alone, and (iv) whether recognition accuracy varies by speaker or self-identified autistic traits. Eight American English speakers were recorded producing utterances presented in contexts conducive to either sarcasm or sincerity. Pre-target parts were presented in a two-alternative forced-choice experiment to individuals who either did (n=51) or did not (n=44) self-identify as being on the autism spectrum, and were examined for syllable duration and f0-related properties (maximum, minimum, range, and wiggliness). Results show that speakers distinguish sarcasm and sincerity in the pre-target region with duration being the most salient marker. Most listeners recognize sarcasm from pre-target fragments, but there is variation in how well each speaker is perceived. Whether the listener self-identified as being on the autism spectrum or not does not predict sarcasm and sincerity recognition accuracy. The results provide evidence that utterance-initial prosody contributes to sarcasm recognition, with the proviso that speaker and listener variation be taken into account.

This article analyses prestopped nasals in Umbuygamu (also known as Morrobolam), a Lamalamic (< Paman < Pama-Nyungan) language of northeastern Australia. The analysis focuses on three features that are of typological interest. First, prestopped realizations have a plosive phase that is significantly longer than the nasal phase, and that is voiceless by default. While classic accounts of the origin of prestopping predict a short and voiced plosive phase, the existence of long and voiceless phases may be due to phonologization and typical location at a prosodic boundary, as suggested by work on parallel cases elsewhere in Australia, specifically in Arandic. Second, prestopped nasals also have preaspirated realizations in Morrobolam, which have not been reported in the literature on prestopping. These are typologically similar to voiceless nasals as found in some Tibeto-Burman languages, in particular the type with aspiration preceding the nasal. Third, there is significant variation in the nature of nasal plosion in prestopped realizations, with some speakers showing relatively long and loud bursts. I argue that these may form a pathway for the emergence of preaspiration from prestopping, with turbulence taking over from a hold-burst structure as the signature characteristic of the non-nasal phase. I also suggest that long and loud bursts may be due to a difference in the mechanics of velum opening, with a glottalic airstream aerodynamically reinforcing muscle-controlled opening of the velum.

Eastern Andalusian Spanish (EAS), spoken in southern Spain, is characterized by the loss of most word-final consonants in casual speech. This deletion leads to adjacent vowel laxing which, in turn, drives harmony: the open quality of the final vowel spreads leftwards to the stressed syllable, as in beso [ˈbe.so] ‘kiss, sg’ vs. besos [ˈbɛ.sɔ] ‘kiss, pl’ (Navarro Tomás 1939; Rodríguez Castellano & Palacio 1948; among others). While the nature of triggers (deletion of -s) and targets (stressed syllables) has been assumed, other patterns remain understudied. For this study, I recorded 18 EAS speakers’ production of oxytonic words containing two mid vowels, with and without underlying final -r/-s (e.g., triplets such as bebé ‘baby’, beber ‘to drink’, and bebés ‘babies’). First and second formants of final and penultimate vowels were extracted. Participants also completed a perception experiment, where they had to match a written word with a recording ending in unpronounced -r, -s, or bare vowel. Results show that deletion of -r and -s produce comparable changes in the two preceding vowels; final vowels become lax, and preceding vowels undergo harmony. Speakers can also identify whether a word ends in an underlying consonant, as well as determining which (-r or -s) above chance (albeit with limited success). These results suggest that EAS harmony (a) is stress-independent and (b) can be triggered by deletion of fricatives and liquids. I propose V-to-V coarticulation as a potential origin of harmony in EAS, aligning with its role as the most common cause of harmony cross-linguistically.

Australian languages have often been noted for their high rates of phonological uniformity cross-linguistically; investigations into the phonetics of these languages, however, have revealed rich phonetic variation below the phonological level. In the current study, the phonetic correlates of stress in thirteen Australian languages with fixed initial stress placement are investigated using corpus phonetics methods and based on archival field recordings of natural speech. Across these languages, a high f0 peak is a common correlate of initial stress, as has often been cited in the literature; increased vowel duration is similarly common. Effects of onset consonant or post-tonic consonant lengthening have been noted for many Australian languages and are sometimes found in this study, though the lengthening may only apply to one or two of stops, nasals, and glides.

Phonetic implementations of Seoul Korean stops have been examined mostly in phrase-initial positions, primarily focusing on the tonogenesis-like sound change which involves a shift in the primary acoustic property for differentiating aspirated and lax categories. Word-medial stops have been much less discussed, except in the context of inter-sonorant voicing of lax stops. To address this gap, the current study provides a comprehensive analysis of aspirated, lax, and tense stops in Seoul Korean across three prosodic positions, Intonational Phrase (IP)-initial, Accentual Phrase (AP)-initial (inter-sonorant), and word-medial (also inter-sonorant), considering various acoustic properties, namely, stop burst duration, closure duration, post-stop f0 (fundamental frequency), F1, H1*-H2*, and voicing during closure. Based on experimental and corpus data, we report that Seoul Korean stops show distinct acoustic patterns in phrase-initial versus word-medial positions. In IP- and AP-initial positions, burst duration and f0 are the primary acoustic properties that distinguish the three categories, with H1*-H2* further differentiating tense from non-tense stops. In word-medial position, however, closure duration, voicing during closure, and burst duration emerge as the main distinguishing properties, though some f0 differences between lax and aspirated stops are observed. This f0 difference is especially noticeable in non-high vowel contexts, suggesting that the tonogenesis-like change may be spreading beyond phrase-initial positions. Overall, the acoustic implementation of the Seoul Korean three-way laryngeal contrast is highly dependent on the prosodic position of the stops, with this positional variation being most noticeable for lax stops.

This study examines the variation in the acoustic properties of the allophones of intervocalic /v/ and /vː/ in Italian, a typologically unusual case where voiced labiodental fricatives contrast phonemically in length. Through an acoustic analysis of read speech from 18 speakers across three regional varieties (Veneto, Roman, Calabrian), we investigate whether realization patterns are shaped by prosodic (phase position and stress placement) and indexical factors (regional variety and speaker sex). Results indicate that /v/ frequently (47%) surfaces as an approximant [ʋ]. In contrast with the principle of geminate ‘inalterability’, /vː/ also exhibits great articulatory variability, with 36% of tokens showing increased constriction including 17% of all tokens realized as a previously undocumented plosive-like labiodental [b̪ː]. Bayesian modelling reveals that approximant variants of /v/ occur more frequently phrase-finally than phrase-medially and that male speakers are more likely to produce more constricted allophones of /vː/. No consistent effects of regional variety were observed, suggesting that the variation may be widespread across Italy. Furthermore, phonemic length alone significantly predicts duration. Therefore, notwithstanding the enhanced phonetic differentiation between /v/ and /vː/, it seems most likely speakers rely primarily on duration to distinguish the pair.

The current study examines variation in postvocalic /r/ in Tarifit, an indigenous Amazigh language of northern Morocco. R-elision is the most frequent phonological form (over 80% of productions in our data). Non-rhoticity is socially conditioned by gender: women produce more r-elision than men. No age differences were observed. Thus, production data indicate that derhoticization is a highly advanced sound change in Tarifit. Additionally, speakers are more likely to produce postvocalic /r/ immediately following a talker who has just produced it (even in a different lexical item). Social evaluations of speakers who produce r-ful and r-less forms of words are also investigated; listeners are more likely to rate a speaker as sounding more educated and nicer when they produce r-elision. Results demonstrate that r-elision is socially conditioned in Tarifit and these findings are discussed in terms of their implications for models of sound change in small and endangered speech communities, and theories about the relationship between the production and perception of phonological variation.

This paper examines the intonational characteristics of information-seeking yes-no questions in Galician, a Romance language spoken in Northwestern Spain. Data from 20 Galician-Spanish bilingual speakers were collected via an interactive communicative task and analyzed acoustically in Praat following Spanish ToBI conventions. The examination of nuclear configurations (nuclear pitch accent and the final boundary tone) showed that yes-no questions were realized primarily with final falls (57%), although final rises were also prevalent (43%). The most frequent nuclear configurations were L+H* H% (44%), H+L* L% (36%), and L* H% (9%). Statistical analysis showed that gender, age and language dominance significantly impacted the realization of nuclear configurations in Galician. Specifically, final falling contours were significantly more frequent in women, in older speakers, and in Galician-dominant participants. On the other hand, final rising contours were significantly more frequent in men, in younger speakers, and in Spanish-dominant participants. Our findings showed a higher incidence of final rising contours in Galician yes-no questions than in previous studies, which could stem from increased contact with standard Castilian Spanish and potentially indicate a change in progress.

Previous research has shown that US Spanish heritage speakers produce the tap-trill contrast with varying manners of articulation and a non-canonical number of occlusions, while using duration as a more robust cue to the contrast. This contrast is present in Spanish, the heritage language, and absent in English, the majority language. In this paper, we examine the development of duration as an acoustic correlate of the tap-trill contrast by analyzing semi-spontaneous productions from child and adult heritage speakers as well as age-matched Spanish speakers from a monolingual environment. The durations of phonetic taps and trills were fitted to Bayesian hierarchical models to examine how these speaker groups differ with respect to their use of duration as an acoustic correlate. The results of our analysis show that the average child heritage speaker produces a smaller durational contrast with increased variability, and that some child heritage speakers show near-complete overlap in the duration of the two segments. Adult heritage speakers demonstrate a reduced difference in the tap-trill contrast when compared to Spanish speakers raised in a monolingual environment, but maintain a contrast between the two sounds. Developmental analyses within the child groups do not show significant differences in trill duration by age, but child Spanish monolinguals show a non-linear reduction in tap duration by age that does not occur for heritage children. Overall, our results support a scenario of protracted development in heritage children for the tap-trill contrast, as well as a potential sound change in progress for US Spanish.

This study uses electropalatography to investigate the production of Serbian laterals /l/ and /ʎ/ focusing on their place of articulation difference and susceptibility to variation as a function of utterance position and vowel context. Data obtained from four speakers producing these sounds utterance-initially, medially intervocalically, and finally and next to /a/, /i/, and /u/. The two consonants were found to be well-differentiated both in terms of their articulation (the front-back location of the closure and dorsopalatal side contact) and acoustics (F2–F1 difference), largely confirming previous observations in the literature. Both laterals showed relative stability across positions, and so did /ʎ/ across vowel contexts. /l/, on the other hand, was more susceptible to coarticulation from high vowels (notably /i/), especially in medial position. In general, its phonetic quality and behavior appeared to be intermediate between the typical clear and dark categories of /l/. The results are discussed in the context of positional and contextual variation of similar sounds in other languages and the cross-linguistic typology of laterals.

This paper compares the acoustic properties of lateral consonants in two syllable positions in four languages – Russian, English, Romanian, and Georgian – each one representative of a distinct allophonic pattern. This study is also the first production study of Georgian lateral allophony including data from multiple speakers. By relying on both static formant measurements and dynamic analyses of formant trajectories, the study provides deeper insights into the role of syllable position and of vowel context in shaping lateral variation cross-linguistically. The results highlight differences in the production of laterals in two ways: they capture the gradience of the ‘dark’/‘light’ lateral variation across the four languages, and they contribute to our understanding of how intrinsic and extrinsic factors interact in lateral consonant production. The findings contribute to the growing body of research on lateral allophony. They underscore the importance of integrating dynamic methods, and of including less well studied languages.