The vowels /i/ and /I/ are not contrastive before /r/ in American English, and the phonetics literature is equivocal about which symbol to use for the nucleus in words such as beer. Similarly /e/ and /ε/ are not contrastive before /r/, and the literature contains varied references to one or the other in words such as bear. The purpose of this study was to investigate these vowels by acoustic measurements, discriminant analyses, and listening tests. Eleven men and ten women residing in southern Michigan recorded /r/-final monosyllables (beer, bear, hear, hair), as well as words containing /i, I e, ε with other finals, such as beet, bit, bait, bet. Acoustic measurements included the first three formants at steady state. The high front vowel in /r/-final syllables (beer, hear) showed formant values intermediate between /i/ and /I/, but closer to /i/, and the mid front vowel (in bear and hair) was intermediate between /e/ and /ε/, but closer to /e/. Discriminant analysis using the first three formants and listening tests using 60 ms vowel excerpts yielded results consistent with the idea that the pre-/r/ vowels are acoustically intermediate between their tense and lax neighbors but resemble /i/ and /e/ more closely than /I/ and /ε/.

Computationally testable models in linguistics focus on declaring data structures and providing exemplar derivations. This paper outlines a comprehensive model of speech production which goes beyond derivations to show how actual instances of utterances can be formally characterised. Utterances contain a wealth of detail beyond the underlying utterance plan: some of this is a function of the mechanism itself (e.g. coarticulation) and some is the result of carefully supervised control. We develop the notion of managed or supervised speech production to enable the inclusion of EXPRESSIVE content in speech. Building on earlier work the Cognitive Phonetics Agent bridges the gap between the physical and cognitive processes in phonetics by controlling the way phonologically determined utterance plans are phonetically rendered in detail. The model is illustrated using different types of data structure which occur in speech, concentrating in particular on an XML characterisation of appropriate structures. We trace a simple utterance through from its phonological plan to a detailed intrinsic allophonic representation to show how stages in the model work.

Standard Eastern Armenian has a three-way VOT contrast among its oral stop series. While it is rare for such a 3-way contrast to be preserved in final position, Standard Eastern Armenian is claimed to do just this (Khachaturian 1988; Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996; Vaux 1998). This phenomenon provides an ideal opportunity to explore how prosodic structure influences the realization of a complex and delicate system of contrast maintained by temporal and saliency distinctions. The cues to this contrast, including VOT, closure duration, and burst amplitude, are examined in a variety of segmental and prosodic environments. The experiment evaluates effects of intonation phrase final, intermediate phrase final, word final, and syllable final positions. We find that the 3-way VOT contrast is maintained in those prosodic domains in which the stop consonants are final. Speakers make significant VOT distinctions among the target consonants within the same boundary condition, and across prosodic conditions, larger prosodic domains exhibit longer VOT values.

Starting with an r that was already ambiguous, the IPA added new symbols and diacritics without arriving at a comprehensive treatment of rhotics. The results have been ad hoc solutions and potential confusion for languages such as Spanish, in which these need to be distinguished. A few modifications of the IPA diacritic system would suffice in order to capture the different types.

Polish is a West Slavonic language with about 41 million speakers in Poland and approximately 10 million in diasporas. It can be described as a ‘consonantal’ language, in two respects: (a) it has a rich system of consonant phonemes, as shown in the table, and (b) it allows heavy consonant clusters, especially word-initially.

The style of speech illustrated is that typical of the educated younger generation in Beijing. The recording is that of a 25-year-old female graduate student who has lived all her life in Beijing.

Kalabari-Ijo (hereafter, Kalabari) is one of the four lects of the KOIN group of East Ijo of the Ijo language cluster in the Niger-Congo phylum (Williamson & Blench 2000: 22). The other lects in this group are Kirike (Okrika), Ibani and Nkoroo. Kirike and Ibani are mutually intelligible with Kalabari, and Nkoroo is partially so. All the lects in this group are spoken in Rivers State, Nigeria. In addition, there are three other groups of Ijo: Nembe-Akaha (Akassa) in East Ijo, Inland Ijo (Oruma, Akita (Okordia), Biseni) and Izon, which together make up West Ijo. These groups are all spoken in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, with Izon spreading further to the west (Williamson, p.c.).

As Ladefoged (1999) points out in his description of American English, there is considerable diversity in the phonetic characteristics of English spoken in North America, such that the commonly used phrase ‘General American English’ is not entirely meaningful. The description of American English provided by Ladefoged was based on a southern California dialect. The purpose of this report is to augment that account with a brief description of southern Michigan speech patterns. According to Labov and colleagues (e.g. Labov, Yeager & Steiner 1972, Labov 1994), southern Michigan, particularly in its urban areas, is part of a relatively large dialect region in the inland northeast United States called ‘Northern Cities’. According to Labov, the Northern Cities dialect cuts an irregular swath through a chain of cities in the inland northeast extending, roughly, from upstate New York (e.g. Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo), through northern Ohio (e.g. Cleveland, Toledo), southern Michigan (e.g. Detroit, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids), northwest Indiana (e.g. Gary, Hammond), northeast Illinois (e.g. Chicago, Rockford) and south-central Wisconsin (e.g. Milwaukee, Madison). Speakers from neighboring regions such as northwest Vermont, northwest Pennsylvania, and north-central/northeast Indiana appear to show some features of the dialect. Labov contends that the vowel shifts that characterize the Northern Cities dialect are observed in their most advanced forms in the largest urban areas of the region, such as Detroit, Buffalo, and Rochester.

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