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The Philological Society President and Secretary's Annual Report for 1937 (Braunholtz & Woodward 1938) reports that J. R. Firth read a paper on ‘The Phonetic Structure of a Cypriotic Dialect’ to the meeting of the Society on 29 May 1937. Firth's paper was never published, and its very existence was subsequently forgotten. Happily, a manuscript and handout for the lecture as well as copious background notes relating to the study have recently come to light at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Though somewhat incomplete, much of the content of the paper can be pieced together to yield a surprising new addition to the body of Firth's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a bare‐bones meta‐analysis, the present study examined the effectiveness of the use of commonly considered alternative predictor methods as a means to reduce subgroup differences (i.e., the method‐change approach), taking into account the constructs assessed. With a focus on assessment centers, interviews, situational judgment tests, and work samples as alternative methods, the results indicated that consonant with the construct/method distinction, the effectiveness of a method in reducing subgroup differences is a function of the constructs assessed. Specifically, there are larger White‐African American subgroup differences that favor Whites for cognitive constructs on paper‐and‐pencil tests compared to the alternative methods; and most notably, the opposite result was obtained for noncognitive constructs such that, compared to paper‐and‐pencil assessments, substantially larger White‐African American subgroup differences were observed for alternative methods. A similar pattern of results was obtained for White‐Hispanic comparisons, albeit based on a smaller number of data points. In summary, the study's results indicate that the ubiquitously asserted effectiveness of the method‐change approach for reducing subgroup differences is overstated, with said effectiveness depending on the construct assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews and comments on the major points made in Albert Gessman's paper, "Grimm's Law: Fact or Myth?" Through the evaluation of the paper's 13 points, several ideas are pointed out that are believed to be crucial to Gessman's arguments. (29 references) (GLR)

This paper provides a constraint-based analysis of the syllable structure of onset consonant sequences in Najdi Arabic, spoken in central Saudi Arabia. Unlike Classical or Standard Arabic, Najdi is believed to allow consonant clusters in the onset. The study tested two assumptions. The first is that Najdi onset clusters result from a vowel deletion process, leading to different kinds of clusters with distinct sonority hierarchies and that these form complex onsets. The second is that Najdi inputs are different from Classical or Standard Arabic, in which there is no vowel in the underlying representation and hence no deletion occurs, resulting in simplex onsets. The paper adopted optimality theory to analyze the data, considering a phenomenon that occurs in the speech of Najdi speakers. Following this framework, constraints were utilized to demonstrate the syllable structure of the onset clusters in Najdi according to the above assumptions. The results revealed consonant sequences rather than consonant clusters, meaning the consonants were not parsed in the same syllable, agreeing with previous acoustic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the phenomenon of tonogenesis is well represented in the literature, diachronic tone change in already-tonal languages has received less attention. This paper considers two types of tonal morphology used to mark the "potential" inflectional category on verbs in Coatec Zapotec (aka Di′zhke′). Some verbs are marked with upstep. Coatec upstepped tones are emergent tonal contrasts that are developing out of high register allotones which assimilated to a historical high tone on a now-deleted preceding syllable. Other verbs display patterns of tone ablaut such that a verb with underlying low or falling tone surfaces with high or rising in the potential. Both upstep and tone ablaut in Coatec can be traced to an earlier floating high tone that could dock onto different syllables according to a set of ranked constraints. Using a combination of internal and comparative reconstruction, details of the earlier tonal system are revealed. This is the first published treatment of Proto-Zapotec tone since Swadesh (1947) and the first paper to address tone in Proto-Zapotecan and Proto Core Zapotec. *ʔ is revealed to have been a consonant through the Core Zapotec period, suggesting that the complex systems of phonation contrasts found in some Central Zapotec languages are a recent development. Cases of tonal contrasts developing out of phonation contrasts are known from Southeast Asia, but Zapotec phonation contrasts arose out of interaction between the glottal consonant and pre-existing tonal contrasts. An exploration of the morphological environments conducive to upstep leads to new discoveries about Zapotecan derivational voice prefixes and reveals the origins of perfective allomorphy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French liaison is a type of external sandhi involving the use of a special consonant-final allomorph before vowel-initial words. Consonants occurring at the end of these allomorphs are challenging for phonological theory because of evidence that their prosodic and segmental realization is intermediate between the realizations of word-final and word-initial consonants. This puzzling behavior of French liaison has been used to motivate new phonological and lexical representations, including floating consonants, lexical constructions and gradient symbolic representations. This paper proposes an alternative analysis: the variable realization of liaison is derived as a paradigm uniformity effect, assuming traditional phonological and lexical representations. In a Word1-Word2 sequence, the liaison consonant at the boundary between the two words ends up acquiring properties of both word-final and word-initial consonants because of a pressure to make contextual variants of Word1 and Word2 similar to their citation forms. The proposal is implemented in a probabilistic constraint-based grammar including paradigm uniformity constraints and is shown to account for the intermediate behavior of liaison both in terms of prosodic attachment and segmental realization. The paper provides evidence for two key predictions of this analysis, using judgment data on the prosodic attachment of liaison consonants in European French and phonetic data on the interaction between liaison and affrication in Quebec French. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work found a correspondence between consonant clustering probability in monosyllabic lexemes and the three vowel types, short and long monophthong and diphthong, in German dialects. Furthermore, that correspondence was found to be bound to a North–South divide. This paper explores the preferences in consonant clustering of particular vowels by analyzing the PhonD2-Corpus, a large database of phonotactic and morphological information. The clustering probability of the diphthongs is positively correlated with frequency while the other vowels showed particular preferences that are not positively correlated with frequency. However, all of them are determined by a threefold pattern: short monophthongs prefer coda clusters, diphthongs onset clusters and long monophthong are balanced. Furthermore, it was found that this threefold pattern seems to have evolved from an originally twofold pattern (short monophthong prefers coda clusters and long monophthong and diphthong prefer onset clusters) in Middle High and Low German. This result is then further considered under the aspect of the compensation of the syllable weight and moraicity. Furthermore, some interesting parallels with the syllable vs. word-language typology framework are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a variety of Sasak called Ampenan Sasak in this paper, traditional documentation and analytical methods based on auditory perception reveal allophonic patterns in alternations of height among mid-vowels. High mid-vowels occur in final syllables ending in [ʔ] or no-coda (e.g. [tokoʔ] 'fish species native to Lombok') while low mid-vowels occur in final syllables ending in all other consonants (e.g. [tɔkɔl] 'to sit'). However, words deviate from these patterns in several minimal pairs (e.g. [bəɾəmbok] 'to discuss' and [bəɾəmbɔk] 'to breathe') and in some borrowings (e.g. [agostos] 'August'), suggesting a quasi-phonemic status for back mid-vowels; they behave like both phonemes and allophones. This study analyzes the phonetic properties of mid-vowels through an acoustic analysis of the F1 and F2 of 2,448 vowel tokens. Results suggest that mid-vowels are largely predictable among non-borrowed vocabulary. In final syllables, syllable openness serves as a predictor for the height of mid-vowels. In pre-final syllables, syllable openness has no effect on the height of the vowel. Rather, the height of pre-final mid-vowels is predictable based on the height of the final-syllable vowel. In consideration of both elicitation and acoustic evidence, this paper adopts a descriptive approach by stating that Ampenan Sasak back mid-vowels are largely predictable, with some exceptions. Further, the paper questions whether all sounds must be identified as a 'phoneme' or an 'allophone' and argues that quasi-phonemic segments are a valuable intermediate descriptor for both phonological theory and language documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Aims Methods & Procedures Outcomes & Results Conclusions & Implications WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS What is already known on the subject What this paper adds to the existing knowledge What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Despite the ability of cochlear implants (CIs) to provide children with access to speech, there is considerable variability in spoken language outcomes. Research aimed at identifying factors influencing speech production accuracy is needed.To characterize the consonant production accuracy of children with cochlear implants (CWCI) and an age‐matched group of children with typical hearing (CWTH) and to explore several factors that potentially affect the ability of both groups to accurately produce consonants.We administered the Bankson‐Bernthal Test of Phonology (BBTOP) to a group of 25 CWCI (mean age = 4;9, SD = 1;6, range = 3;2–8;5) implanted prior to 30 months of age with a mean duration of implant usage of 3;6 and an age‐matched group of 25 CWTH (mean age = 5;0, SD = 1;6, range = 3;1–8;6). The recorded results were transcribed, and the accuracy of the target consonants was determined. Expressive vocabulary size estimates were obtained from a language sample using the number of different words (NDW). A parent questionnaire provided information about maternal education, duration of CIs experience and other demographic characteristics of each child.The CWCI group demonstrated some similarities to, and some differences from, their hearing peers. The CWCI demonstrated poorer consonant production accuracy overall and in various phonetic categories and word positions. However, both groups produced initial consonants more accurately than final consonants. Whilst CWCI had poorer production accuracy than CWTH for all phonetic categories (stops, nasals, fricatives, affricates, liquids and glides and consonant clusters), both groups exhibited similar error patterns across categories. For CWCI, the factors most related to consonant production accuracy when considered individually were expressive vocabulary size, followed by duration of CI experience, chronological age, maternal education and gender. The combination of maternal education and vocabulary size resulted in the best model of consonant production accuracy for this group. For the CWTH, chronological age followed by vocabulary size were most related to consonant production accuracy. No combination of factors yielded an improved model for the CWTH.Whilst group differences in production accuracy between the CWCI and CWTH were found, the pattern of errors was similar for the two groups of children, suggesting that the children are at earlier stages of overall consonant production development. Although duration of CI experience was a significant covariate in a single‐variable model of consonant production accuracy for CWCI, the best multivariate model of consonant production accuracy for these children was based on the combination of expressive vocabulary size and maternal education. Research has shown that a range of factors is associated with consonant production accuracy by CWCIs, including factors such as the age at implant, duration of implant use, gender, other language skills and maternal education. Despite numerous studies that have examined speech sound production in these children, most have explored a limited number of factors that might explain the variability in scores obtained. Research that examines the potential role of a range of child‐related and environmental factors in the same children is needed to determine the predictive role of these factors in speech production outcomes. Whilst the consonant production accuracy was lower for the CWCIs than for their typically hearing peers, there were some similarities suggesting that these children are experiencing similar, but delayed, acquisition of consonant production skills to that of their hearing peers. Whilst several factors are predictive of consonant production accuracy in children with implants, vocabulary diversity and maternal education, an indirect measure of socio‐economic status, were the best combined predictors of consonant production accuracy. Understanding the factors that shape individual differences in CWCI speech production is important for effective clinical decision‐making and intervention planning. The present findings point to two potentially important factors related to speech sound production beyond the duration of robust hearing in CWCI, namely, a lexical diversity and maternal education. This suggests that intervention is likely most efficient that addresses both vocabulary development and speech sound development together. The current findings further suggest the importance of parental involvement and commitment to spoken language development and the importance of receiving early and consistent intervention aimed both at skill development and parental efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines patterns of gemination in child Egyptian Arabic, with a focus on how gemination functions as a repair strategy, using data from the Egyptian Arabic Salama Corpus. The findings show that the phonological development of Egyptian Arabic-speaking children of geminated consonants correlates with previously established developmental stages. Initial stages involve the acquisition of labial geminates, transitioning through an increased use of alveolar and velar geminates, to the acquisition of rhotic and lateral geminates in later phases. The findings also suggest that gemination is not merely a phonetic phenomenon in child phonology, but also shows the children's awareness of the phonology of the dialect, especially the moraicity of vowels and consonants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech perception is influenced by language-specific phonological knowledge. While phonotactics has long been established to play a role, the study of how phonological alternations influence perception is still in its infancy. In this paper, we make a case for the latter by investigating the role of regressive voicing assimilation (RVA) in the perception of obstruent clusters in Emilian dialects of Italian. We provide empirical evidence from a phoneme-detection task, in which Emilian listeners reported to have heard [b] significantly more often in stimuli with a /p/ before a voiced obstruent (RVA context) than before a vowel (non-RVA context). Our experimental findings add to recent work on the influence of phonology on speech perception. In addition, we provide an explicit formalisation, which bolsters the need for a rigid distinction between phonetic, surface and underlying representation, and an explicit mapping between all three, both in the process of speech production and comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avoidance of adjacent consonants that are ‘sufficiently identical’ – that is, identical except for possible differences in a small subset of specific features – is argued to result from joint satisfaction of a constraint against geminates (identical adjacent consonants) and other active constraints that independently require assimilation with respect to those features ignored in the determination of identity. The crux of the proposal is the dependence of antigemination on independent assimilation processes, a prediction that is independently verified in case studies from English and Lithuanian. The factorial typology of constraints at the core of the proposal is demonstrated to closely fit a significant range of observed cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an interpretation of an insufficiently understood verb form in the Neo-Babylonian letter OIP 114, 17:8, 29, thereby clarifying its contents. The word in question is shown to be an Aramaic verb form. This interpretation is supported by observations on the orthography and phonology of early Neo-Babylonian. It follows from the study that in eighth-century Neo-Babylonian two glottalized (‘emphatic’) consonants in the same word still underwent dissimilation, as in the second millennium BCE (Geers’ law). The paper also demonstrates that, against communis opinio, erstwhile Aramaic fricative interdentals had shifted to stops by the eighth century BCE, while the orthography of contemporaneous Aramaic alphabetic texts reflected an earlier stage of language evolution. This conclusion has been reached by means of comparing cuneiform renderings of proto-Semitic interdentals in West Semitic personal names in eighteenth century BCE Old Babylonian texts and in Neo-Babylonian texts from the ninth and eighth centuries BCE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Aims: To investigate the developmental trajectory of the rate and perceptual assessment of oral diadochokinesis (DDK) in typically developing children compared with adults. Also to examine the characteristics of DDK productions in children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and the relationship between DDK production and percentage of consonants correct (PCC). Methods & Procedures: Participants were 316 typically developing children and 90 children with SSD from 3 to 9 years old, as well as 20 adults with normal speech. The mono‐, bi‐ and trisyllabic nonsense strings containing Korean tense consonants and the vowel [a] were used for DDK tasks. The number of iterations per s was measured as the DDK rate for each stimulus. The perceptual assessment of DDK productions was also performed for regularity, accuracy and rate. Outcomes & Results: The DDK rates increased throughout childhood, but the oldest children, 9‐year‐olds in the current study, did not achieve adult‐like rates for all mono‐ and trisyllabic strings. Children with SSD also did not show significant differences from typically developing children when the DDK productions were analysed using only accurate tokens. The PCC of children with SSD showed higher correlations with regularity, accuracy and rate of perceptual ratings than the timed DDK rate. Conclusions & Implications: This study highlighted the fact that the comprehensive evaluation of DDK productions may provide even more useful information about children's oral motor skills. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject: Rates of DDK reflect the motor skills of the articulatory systems independently of phonological skills; therefore, the tasks are widely used in the diagnostic evaluations of speech disorders in both children and adult populations. However, a substantial number of studies have questioned the validity and usefulness of DDK rates for evaluating speech abilities. Also, the literature suggested that the measure of DDK rate alone does not provide a clear and useful indication of children's oral motor skills. DDK tasks should be analysed in terms of accuracy and consistency as well as rate. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge: The literature reporting normative DDK performance has mainly been based on English speakers. As different consonants have different temporal characteristics, the linguistic and segmental features of DDK tasks can impact the DDK rate. This study established a norm for DDK rate for Korean‐speaking children and investigated the developmental trajectory of DDK performance in typically developing children compared with adults. This study suggested that the comprehensive evaluation of DDK productions may provide even more useful information about children's oral motor skills by examining the characteristics of DDK productions in children with SSD. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: This study provided normative data of young Korean‐speaking children aged 3–9 years. Normative data in children under 5 years of age are valuable given that the majority of children referred for speech difficulty assessments are between 3 and 5 years of age, but only a few studies have provided the normative data in young children. This study showed that many children could not complete DDK tasks correctly and provided additional support for the notion that other aspects of DDK performance, including accuracy and regularity, may yield more useful diagnostic indications than timed DDK rates alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper discusses word-initial (sibilant + consonant) sequences that may or may not be preceded by a vowel in Brazilian Portuguese, as, for example, in escola [isˈkɔlə] ~ [ˈskɔlə] 'school' or Skype [isˈkajpi] ~ [ˈskajpi]. They will be referred to as sC-clusters. The vowel-zero alternation in word-initial sC-clusters is an optional phenomenon in BP, which affects native and loan words at different rates. This study tested the hypothesis that the segmental string in word-initial sC-clusters differs for native and loan words, and that such a difference could be captured by the experimental analysis. Results showed that the vowel is shorter in loan words than in native words. Results also showed that when the vowel is not manifested, the sibilant is longer than when a vowel occurs. It is suggested that the durational properties of high vowels and sibilants characterize phonetic detail, which plays a role in the implementation of the vowel-zero alternation in sC-clusters in BP. Results were examined in light of Kaye's (1992) representational model and Exemplar Models. The paper also indicates the relevance of experimental investigation in phonology, as suggested by Laboratory Phonology approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have explored the relevance of metrical structures in segmental processes. This paper shows that Dagbani (Gur, Ghana), has a prosodic word dominating a trochaic foot which licenses segmental processes and phonotactics. The foot is the domain for marked vowels and unmarked consonants. The prosodic word regulates the sequencing of syllables of different degrees of sonority and weight within a word. The Optimality Theoretic analyses make use of classical metrical theory and prosodic principles used in defining the prosodic word in stress languages to highlight the typological relevance of these principles and the prosodic universality of these metrical structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Northern and Western dialects of the Mon-Khmer language Kammu use fundamental frequency to distinguish words, while the Eastern dialect relies on the contrastive voicing of initial consonants to distinguish words which display an F0 contrast in the other dialects. The production and perception of tones in the three dialects is investigated, using recordings and perception tests. As expected, Northern and Western Kammu speakers do use F0 to distinguish words, as seen both in their production and in perception tests, which show that they could distinguish small F0 differences. In contrast, Eastern Kammu speakers neither produce nor perceive F0 differences at the lexical level. Furthermore, the voiceless and voiced stops in Eastern Kammu cause smaller F0 perturbations in the following vowel than might be expected for a language undergoing tonogenesis. The significance of these results for tonogenesis is discussed, as well as their relevance for the notion of ‘tone language’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plural internal reduplication in Washo has generated much interest in the phonological literature. This study presents a novel analysis that unifies the treatment of a set of seemingly disparate aspects of this plural reduplication pattern (e.g. variation in the placement and size of the reduplicant, contrastive vowel length in stressed syllables, post-tonic gemination, and vowel-length inheritance in reduplication), relying on the interaction between constraints on weight assignment, affix anchoring and stress assignment. In particular, the odd placement of the plural reduplicant in roots with internal consonant sequences and the restricted distribution of long vowels in Washo can be attributed to a previously unnoticed emerging preference for heavy stressed syllables on the surface. The results of this study have implications for theories of reduplication and theories of weight phenomena in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a detailed description of the phonology of the Rongpa variety of Choyul, an understudied Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Lithang (理塘) County, Dkarmdzes (甘孜) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, China. Based on firsthand fieldwork data, this paper lays out Rongpa phonology with details, examining its syllable canon, initial and rhyme systems, and word prosody. Peculiar characteristics of this phonological system are as follows: First, Rongpa has a substantial phonemic inventory, which comprises 43 consonants, 13 vowels, and 2 tones. 84 consonant clusters are observed to serve as the initial of a syllable. Secondly, the phonemic contrast between plain and uvularized vowels is attested. In addition, regressive vowel harmony on uvularization, height, and lip-roundedness can be clearly observed in various constructions including prefixed verb stems. Finally, regarding word prosody, two tones in monosyllabic words, /H/ and /L/, are observed to distinguish lexical meanings, and disyllabic words exhibit four surface pitch patterns. Pitch patterns in verb morphology are also examined. The findings and analyses as presented in this paper could form a foundation for future research on Rongpa Choyul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Place-names occupy a special area in the vocabulary of the Polish language. Their shape occasionally differs to a greater or lesser extent from that of words which constitute the bulk of the lexicon. They have been investigated in terms of semantics and etymology by various linguists, but their phonological analysis is only occasionally provided. In this paper, word-initial consonant combinations found in Polish place-names are presented and analysed from the viewpoint of Government Phonology in its most recent version called Complexity Scales and Licensing. The analysis, covering bi-consonantal, tri-consonantal and tetra-consonantal clusters, will be conducted with a view to finding out how the model shows the possible governing relationships between consonants. Of specific interest is the question of whether these toponyms are totally peculiar or just normal in terms of the phonotactics of the Polish language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides fine-grained evidence concerning the development of syllabic consonants /r l/ in Czech, that is only sketched in the existing literature. The evidence is based on an automatic parser that identifies potential syllable-projecting segments according to sonority. The parser was applied to six verse texts from the 14th–16th centuries, which show a strong tendency towards octosyllabicity. The data provided by the parser newly reveal that the shift from non-syllabic to syllabic /r l/ is position-dependent: word-medial non-syllabic strings C(r/l)C change more rapidly than non-syllabic word-final ones C(r/l)#. This finding is in line with a cross-linguistic observation that non-syllabic C(r/l)C are marked, hence they are regularly syllabified prior to less marked C(r/l)#. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nasal Consonant (NC) sequences, in Bantu languages, and the long vowels preceding them remains a puzzle in Bantu literature and research. This paper provides a descriptively oriented analysis of the relationship between long vowels and nasal consonant sequences in Kisa, a dialect of Luhya, a Bantu language spoken in Khwisero Constituency Western Province, Kenya. The data used in this paper was generated by the author as a native speaker of Kisa. The central descriptive fact is that NC sequences in words consisting of native Kisa morphemes are usually, but not obligatorily, preceded by long vowels.1 As such, NC sequences usually appear as part of an overall VVNC sequence. This pattern is widely found in Bantu languages, and the modelling of this preference for VVNC sequences has been a significant topic in phonological research on Bantu languages. Kisa provides evidence against the predominant analysis of the VVNC preference in Bantu-compensatory lengthening. The paper shows that compensatory lengthening does not provide a well-motivated analysis of Kisa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of bilingualism on the difficulties of pronunciation for both L1 (Arabic) and L2 (English). It assesses the production of stop sounds in Arabic and English through an acoustic analysis of stops' closure duration (henceforth CD), as pronounced by Arabic-English bilinguals whose L1 is Palestinian Arabic. Additionally, the paper aims to highlight the difficulties of pronunciation in both languages. Three groups of sameaged adult subjects participated in the production tests; 1) Arabic-English bilinguals whose L1 is Palestinian Arabic, 2) Arabic-monolinguals, and 3) English-monolinguals. The stops in word-medial and final positions were included in closed syllables (CVC) in meaningful words inserted in carrier sentences. The results revealed that the CD of the interaction of stops was represented in four categories; 1) unidirectional effect of L1 on L2 that caused a foreign accent, 2) bidirectional influence resulting in L1-L2 interference, 3) unidirectional impact of L2 on L1, and 4) nativelikeness in both languages without language interference. In addition, the findings showed that bilinguals faced pronunciation challenges in both similar and dissimilar sounds. This paper is expected to initiate more comprehensive studies in the field of interaction between Arabic and English in the Arabic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to explore the study of permissible orders of Khasibi segments in formatting syllable templates (phonotactics). The treatment of phonotactic rules and representations of Khasibi syllables is touched on by means of two influential factors. One of them is the non-linear perspective that is used to cover the hierarchal mapping of the syllables. The other is greater exploitation of the theory of distinctive features to elucidate the phonetic properties of the sound segments of which the syllables are made up. The overall phonontactic scene of Khasibi Arabic is thus integrated by double phonological instruments to attain some sort of comprehensiveness and universality and simultaneously to manifest a degree of idiosyncrasy. Different results are objectively reached, and the most noteworthy one is that two X-position consonants (consonantal clusters) are formed uniquely whereby certain phonological phenomena like geminates and ambi-syllabicity are directly responsible for such a formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on Mahboob and Elyas (World Engl 33(1):128–142, 2014), who identified an expanding circle variety of Englishes, known as 'Saudi English', the present paper addresses the consonantal variations between Formal English and a sub-variety of Saudi English, termed as 'Saudi Hijazi English'. The paper presents the specific consonants of Saudi Hijazi English through conducting an interview with five Hijazi linguists to obtain qualitative data concerning the consonants that constitute Saudi Hijazi English sound system. The paper argues that there are eighteen consonants constituting Saudi Hijazi English sound system. This sound system is partly influenced by the sound system of Urban Hijazi dialect only and partly by the sound system of both Urban Hijazi dialect and Modern Standard Arabic together. Finally, the paper claims that the consonantal variations between Formal English and Saudi Hijazi English have certain implications for oral intralingual translation, particularly if the latter is unknown to the formal English speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into some aspects of suprasegmental features such as syllable structure, stress, and rhythm and compares them between NS and NNS. It is investigated in spectrograms and sound waveforms that 1. On the aspect of syllable structure in English, the onset and the coda in English syllable structure are characterized to have a maximum of 3 and 4 consonant clusters, respectively. In contrast, Korean allows only 1 single consonant in onset and coda position. This cross-linguistic difference gives rise to the insertion of the neutral vowel/?/to break up the consonant clusters in English words, in which the inserted vowel forms an independent wave chunk. 2. Refer to stress in English, it is universally recognized as every single English word or sentence consist of its own stress. On the contrary, Korean lacks stress placed at the level of the word. It follows that Korean EFL learners tend to put an approximately equal prominence on every syllable in a word and to exhibit a tendency to put a strong prominence particularly on the first syllable of a word with more than 2 syllables, which is dubbed an 'initial prominence phenomenon' in this paper. 3. In relation to English rhythm, English is certainly a stress-timed rhythm, but Korean is a syllable-timed rhythm. The core differences between the stress-timed rhythm and the syllable-timed are on the form of 'foot', which is established when stressed and unstressed syllables occur in relatively regular alternating patterns in sentences, led to a phenomenon of that the number of feet depends on the timing of articulation within a whole sentence. Given that suprasegmental features play a more important role than segmental ones, this paper finds its significance in exhibiting these features in visualization between NS and NNS, meanwhile, has a historical significance of laying a milestone for the future researchers in the EFL phonetics field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work has demonstrated an ongoing change across varieties of English in which /s/ retracts before consonants, particularly before /tɹ/ clusters (e.g., Lawrence, 2000; Shapiro, 1995; Stuart-Smith et al., 2019). Much of this work has focused on the social and linguistic distributions of /stɹ/ within single communities, without an examination of the broader sibilant space (e.g., /s/ and /ʃ/). Meanwhile, analyses across multiple corpora have shown that /s/ and /ʃ/ also show within-community variability, beyond /stɹ/ contexts (Stuart-Smith et al., 2019, 2020). Intersecting these approaches, this paper explores sibilant variation and change across /stɹ/, /s/, and /ʃ/ using a corpus of Washington D.C. African American Language (AAL). Results indicate that /stɹ/-retraction is a stable variant in this variety of AAL and /s/ and /ʃ/ show evidence of socially stratified variation and change. Overall, this paper demonstrates the need to examine the sibilant space more holistically when examining changes in /stɹ/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applies two fundamental principles of optimalist theory to yield predictions about cluster reduction patterns. (Author/VWL)