This paper investigates the production of /h/ by French learners of German in comparison to German native speakers. Anecdotally, French speakers are assumed to delete /h/ when speaking German. We investigate the extent to which learners have problems producing /h/ and if advanced learners show different production patterns than beginners. When French speakers produce /h/ our analysis focuses on...

This article presents a sociolinguistic investigation of a rapidly expanding innovation in the UK, glottal replacement, in a variety spoken in northeast Scotland. Quantitative analysis of the form shows a dramatic change in apparent time: from a minority variant in the older generation to a full 90 per cent use in the younger generation. Further analysis of the constraints on use provide a deta...

Variation in voicing is common among sounds of the world’s languages: that are analyzed as voiceless can undergo voicing, and those voiced devoice. Among glottal particular, widespread: linguists often expect stop [ʔ] fricative [h] to be fully voiced, especially between vowels. In this study, we use audio recordings from Illustrations International Phonetic Alphabet published Journal Associatio...

Words can be pronounced in multiple ways in casual speech. Corpus analyses of the frequency with which these pronunciation variants occur (e.g., Patterson & Connine, 2001) show that typically, one pronunciation variant tends to predominate; this raises the question of whether variant recognition is aligned with exposure frequency. We explored this issue in words containing one of four phonologi...

This study aims to present evidence of gender variability among leaders language change across different sociolinguistic variables, five phonological variables (a consonant and four vowels) a discourse variable in Syrian Arabic, within the same speech community. Employing variationist approach comparing children adults yielded gendered linguistic behavior. Children show dramatic difference as r...

Northern dialects of the Mayan language Mam have a ternary weight scale for assigning stress, with added wrinkle that syllables glottal codas are heavier than those other coda types: VV > Vʔ VC V. This ranking is initially surprising under currently accepted prominence theory (Ryan 2019, 2020), where all equally moraic in contexts. However, phonetic experiment undertaken by Kuo & Elkins ...

This paper investigates the production of Arabic gutturals by native (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs) Arabic. A total 40 participants, 20 NSs NNSs were recruited. 240 tokens collected using two major methods: free speech nonsense word testing. Using PRAAT software (version 6.1.01), analyzed acoustically to measure F1 F2 signal (non)significance difference between target groups auditorily ra...

This study explores metathesis in Syrian Arabic (SyA). The data reveal two types of metatheses. Type-I is phonologically conditioned, involving at least one the four root consonants, ʒ, f, ʕ and ћ with fricatives (z, s), liquids (l, r) or gutturals (q/ʔ) specific positions within regardless word derivation. Type-II morpho-phonologically Standard reflexive Pattern VIII, (ʔi)ftaʕal, that resulted...

This paper examines the distribution of three phonological variables—(rr), (-r) and (-s)—in a corpus of songs representing the blend of hip-hop and reggae that is now the most popular rhythm among young Latin Americans. The analyses investigate to what extent this new genre, known as reggaetón, reflects both the use of pronunciations identified as typical of Puerto Rican Spanish and the phonolo...