Dialects of Swedish vary in the pronunciation of unstressed /e/ in different phonological environments. In this pilot study, Stockholm Swedish is compared with several Finland Swedish dialects. Stockholm and one Åland dialect lower and back /e/ before [n], while Helsinki and most Nyland dialects lower and back /e/ before [r]. The data provide evidence for the sociolinguistic relevance of unstre...

One of the most widely studied observations in linguistic phonetics is that, all else being equal, vowels are longer before voiced than before voiceless obstruents. The causes of this phonetic generalization are, however, poorly understood and several competing explanations have been proposed. No studies have so far measured vowel duration before stops with yet another laryngeal feature: ejecti...

Speech perception is remarkably robust. This paper examines how acoustic and auditory properties of vowels and consonants help to ensure intelligibility. First, the source-filter theory of speech production is briefly described, and the relationship between vocal-tract properties and formant patterns is demonstrated for some commonly occurring vowels. Next, two accounts of the structure of pref...

Data from Åland on the phonetic realisations of stop contrasts show that similar historical developments have occurred in the geographically distinct regions of Åland and Iceland. These developments can be seen as convergent, since they seem to arise independently in the two regions. The Åland data also provide examples of stops that are preaspirated and postaspirated at the same time, which is...

Linguists have traditionally represented patterns of divergence within a language family in terms of either a 'splits' model, corresponding to a branching family tree structure, or the wave model, resulting in a (dialect) continuum. Recent phylogenetic analyses, however, have tended to assume the former as a viable idealization also for the latter. But the contrast matters, for it typically ref...

This study is part of a programmatic research on Twi undertaken at the laboratory of general and experimental phonetics at the Institut de Phonétique de Strasbourg. Twi is a register tone language spoken in Ghana, West Africa. It has a two tone system (high/low) and the downstep phenomena. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, some phonological aspects of Twi tones are described. Second, pr...

In this presentation, I argue that unifying phonetics and phonology in the grammar has undesirable consequences. Evidence for this position is provided from various sources, but focuses on intonation, an area of linguistic structure that has often been viewed as not requiring an abstract phonological representation.

In Lezgian, a Nakh-Daghestanian language, final and preconsonantal ejectives and voiceless unaspirated obstruents are voiced in certain monosyllabic nouns. This article offers acoustic evidence confirming that the two coda-voicing series are indeed voiced in final position. Based on comparative evidence, it is demonstrated that this phonetically aberrant neutralization pattern is the result of ...