This pilot study focuses on the biphasic plosive [ m b] in Southern Min. Acoustic analysis suggests that its nasal portion tends to be weak in nasality (nasal flow) but tighter in integrity (not readily separable from the plosive portion) in comparison with prenasalized plosives described in the literature. On the other hand, the [mb] in Amdo Tibetan is similar to known prenasalized plosives in...

This presentation reviews the use of distinctive features for the mental representation of speech sounds, briefly considering three bases for feature definition: articulatory, auditory and translational. We then review several recent neuroimaging studies examining distinctive features using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Although this area of research is still relatively new, we already have int...

A well­established difference between male and female voices, at least in an Anglo­Saxon con­ text, is the greater degree of breathy voice used by women. The acoustic measure that has most commonly been used to validate this difference are the relative strengths of the first and second harmonics, H1­H2. This paper suggests that sex­specific differences in harmonic spacing comb...

During the last two decades an increasing number of initiatives has sought to construct or reconstruct historic computing devices, and restore original specimens to working order. The feature articles in this issue describe six such projects written by those who delivered the successful outcomes or who were instrumental in their realization. In each of the four reconstruction projects described...