Recent phonological approaches incorporate phonetic principles in the motivation of phonological regularities, e.g. vowel reduction and neutralization in unstressed position by target undershoot. So far, evidence for this hypothesis is based on impressionistic and acoustic data but not on articulatory data. The major goal of this study is to compare formant spaces and lingual positions during the production of German vowels for combined effects of stress, accent and corrective contrast. In order to identify strategies for vowel reduction independent of speaker-specific vocal-tract anatomies and individual biomechanical properties, an approach similar to the Generalized Procrustes Analysis was applied to formant spaces and lingual vowel target positions. The data basis consists of the German stressed and unstressed full vowels /iù ɪ yù ʏ eù ɛ ɛù φù œ aù a où ɔ uù ʊ/ from seven speakers recorded by means of electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMMA). Speaker normalized articulatory and formant spaces gave evidence for a greater degree of coarticulation with the consonant context for unstressed vowels as compared to stressed vowels. However, only for tense vowels could spatial reduction patterns be attributed to vowel shortening, whereas lax vowels were reduced without shortening. The results are discussed in the light of current theories of vowel reduction, i.e. target undershoot, Adaptive Dispersion Theory and Prominence Alignment.

In Russian, the same consonant sequences are permitted in various phonotactic environments. The presence of a word boundary or reduced vowel can be phonologically contrastive, and both learners and experienced listeners may rely on fine acoustic cues to discriminate between phonotactic possibilities. In this study, durational characteristics of consonant sequences are examined to establish whether speakers use duration to distinguish (a) word-initial clusters (#C1C2), (b) consonant–schwa–consonant sequences (#C1əC2), and (c) sequences divided by a word boundary (C1#C2). Both monolingual native Russian speakers and bilingual Russian–English speakers produced several types of target sequences: stop+consonant, fricative+consonant, and nasal+consonant. Results show that C2 is significantly longer in C1#C2 than in other sequences. For #C1C2, when C1 is a stop, there is no significant difference in duration when compared with other sequence types, though C1s of other manners are significantly shorter. Differences in C1 burst duration for stops are consonant-specific, but a longer interconsonantal duration is a reliable cue to schwa presence in #C1əC2. These results are discussed with respect to their implications for gestural coordination, segmentation, and language learning.

This study explores acoustic correlates to the singleton vs. geminate stop length contrast in Japanese. The proposal examined is that multiple acoustic features covary with the stop length distinction and that these features are available in the signal as potential secondary cues. The results support the proposal, revealing the presence of several acoustic features covarying with the singleton vs. geminate contrast in both durational and non-durational domains. Specifically, the preceding vowel is longer, the following vowel is shorter, there are greater fundamental frequency and intensity changes from the preceding to the following vowel, and there is evidence of more creakiness in voice quality for geminate than singleton consonants. It is also demonstrated that the vowel durations, as well as fundamental frequency and intensity changes have fairly strong categorization power.

Temporal lengthening of gestures and segments located in a boundary-adjacent syllable has been found in both pre- and postboundary contexts. However, the temporal extent or scope of this lengthening, particularly in the articulatory domain, is not well described. We address the question of scope of prosodic lengthening by considering specifically whether prominence interacts with boundary-related articulatory lengthening in such a way that prominent elements not immediately at a phrase edge are lengthened relative to the same prominent elements phrase-medially (i.e. at a considerable distance from a boundary). Articulatory kinematic data were collected for three subjects to analyze consonant constrictions of prominent syllables located (1) either immediately before or after a boundary and (2) two and three syllables away from that boundary. The results indicate that, as expected, gestures undergo prosodic lengthening when immediately local to the phase boundary. However, some subjects did display prosodic lengthening at a small remove from the boundary for a prominent syllable. This effect was strongest in the postboundary condition. These results suggest that a consideration of prominence may be relevant in understanding the temporal patterning of boundary-related articulatory lengthening.

Indonesian is an Austronesian language, closely related to Malay. Malay served as a lingua franca throughout the Malay Archipelago for centuries, and a variant of Malay was adopted as the official language of Indonesia when independence was declared in 1945. The variety described here is sometimes referred to as Standard Indonesian. Its autoglossonym is ‘Bahasa Indonesia’.

Kabiye is a Gur (Voltaic) language that belongs to the Eastern Grusi (also Gurunsi) sub-branch of Central Gur, which in turn sub-branches from Gur that is part of the greater Niger-Congo language family (Naden 1989: 147). The number of native Kabiye speakers is estimated at 730,000, with approximately 700,000 speakers living in Togo, 30,000 in Benin, and a very small number in Ghana (Grimes 2000: 242). The original homeland of the Kabiye people is in Northeastern Togo, with the region of Kozah serving as the community's cultural center. From the early 20th century, however, the community began to spread southward and now encompasses locations in the central and southern parts of Togo, as well as in the neighboring countries (Ali-Napo 1997: 20).

Salasaca Quichua (ISO 639-3=qxl) is a Quechuan language, specifically of the branch referred to as Quechua A (Parker 1963), as Quechua IIB (Torero 1974), or the northern group (Landerman 1991); but see Landerman (1991) and Adelaar (2004) regarding doubts with respect to the classification of the different varieties. The variety described in this paper is spoken by approximately 12,000 people in Ecuador. The Salasaca ‘parroquia’ (Spanish usage in Ecuador of this word is for a non-religious administrative district), in Pelileo canton, in Tungurahua province, is divided into eighteen communities and Quichua is spoken in all of them. This variety is similar to that of others of the region and is included in the Stark & Muysken (1977) dictionary. Varieties of Quechua in this area do not have the more open allophones attested farther south (such as in Peru), and for that reason the Ecuadorian varieties are traditionally called ‘Quichua’ rather than ‘Quechua’.

The following is a list of IPA members by country based on the Association records at the end of 2007. Numbers in parentheses indicate the total number of members per country. There were a total of 543 IPA members in 2007 from 54 countries.