The release and aspiration of word-final /t/ and /d/ are important sociolinguistic variables in American English because they have strong, contextually driven indexicality. Word-final /t d/ releases are usually coded impressionistically due to the absence of automated methods for identifying prepausal release bursts or aspiration. This paper introduces an automated method for identifying released tokens prepausally and for measuring phonetic properties of releases. We use the method to code prepausal /t d/ release versus non-release in a corpus of conversational English in Raleigh. We assess the data in relation to internal and social factors in order to validate the automated method, finding that the patterns in the automatically generated distributions match those in previous studies. We next show that among Raleigh White speakers but not Black speakers, /t d/ releases are becoming more frequent and stronger after obstruents across apparent time, a change that reflects Raleigh’s changing cultural landscape.

This paper presents an acoustic study of coarticulation of Argentine Danish /ts/ using Centre of Gravity (CoG) as the acoustic measure. It shows that the articulation of /ts/ is affected by the roundedness of the following vowel, and that this is more prevalent among speakers of Argentine Danish than among speakers of Modern Danish as spoken in Denmark. The analysis also shows that within Argentine Danish, the speakers of the isolated settlement Eldorado have a larger effect of roundedness in their articulation of /ts/ than the speakers of the settlements in the Pampas and in Buenos Aires. The results are discussed from the perspective of phonological theory on enhanced coarticulation as a source of sound change and from the perspective of theory of language change in heritage languages.

I investigate the acquisition of affrication in Québec French (QF), where affricates are in complementary distribution with coronal stops, being realized before high front vowels and glides. Previous research on other languages shows that affricates are acquired before branching onsets, which supports the idea that complexity at the level of the segment is acquired before complexity at the level of the syllable (Lleó & Prinz, 1997). In contrast, I hypothesize that affricates are acquired after branching onsets in QF, as learners are required to understand the constraints on their distribution. I examine longitudinal data from two QF-speaking children for whom the acquisition of branching onsets has been previously analyzed (Rose, 2000). Results show that affricates are indeed acquired after branching onsets, consistent with the hypothesis. Overapplication errors indicate that children make generalizations about the phonological constraints on affrication from an early age, which is expected for the acquisition of rules.

Cet article présente une étude diachronique portant sur le changement de la norme de prononciation québécoise entre 1970 et 2008 sur la base d'un corpus de quatre heures et trente minutes de journaux télévisés de Radio-Canada, 52 à 58 minutes d'enregistrements ayant été prises en compte tous les dix ans durant cette période. L’étude compare la perspective sociolinguistique externe sur la norme (de prononciation) à la perspective interne de la phonétique sur cette même norme en se basant sur une analyse quantitative de deux traits de prononciation particulièrement saillants du français québécois : l'affrication de /t, d/ ainsi que la réalisation antériorisée de /ɑ̃/. Les résultats indiquent – du moins pour ces deux traits de prononciation – un changement significatif partant du standard de prononciation parisien et débouchant sur un standard québécois, les changements les plus frappants pouvant être observés entre les années 1970 et 1990.

This paper provides evidence for the activity of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) as a constraint on dynamic alternations in the synchronic grammar of Qatari Arabic. It shows that the OCP is subject to proximity and to a gradient similarity effect. In Qatari Arabic, there are two variable phonological alternations that interact with the OCP, affrication and lenition. The velar stops /g/ and /k/ affricate to [ʤ] and [ʧ], respectively, when adjacent to [i(:)]. However, affrication is blocked when the outcome includes a sequence of segments that are highly similar. Lenition applies variably to the phoneme /ʤ/, which surfaces as [ʤ] or [j]. Usually, the probability of lenition applying to its eligible candidates is around the level of chance. The process, however, applies categorically when a violation of the OCP would otherwise be incurred. The data are analyzed within the framework of Optimality Theory.