The Western dialect of Naxi has four lexical tones: High, Mid, Low and Rising; the latter is rare in the lexicon. Rising contours on monosyllables are frequent in connected speech, however, as a result of a process of syllable reduction: reduction of a morpheme carrying the High tone results in re-association of its tone to the syllable that precedes it in the sentence, creating a rising contour. An experiment (with one speaker and five listeners) establishes that there is not only one rising contour that originates in tonal reassociation, as reported in earlier descriptions, but two: Low-to-High and Mid-to-High – as could be expected by analogy with phenomena observed in Niger-Congo languages and elsewhere. A second set of experiments (same speaker; six listeners) investigates the reduction of Mid- and Low-tone syllables: they reduce to [] and [], respectively, and coalesce with the preceding syllable (in Naxi, syllabic structure is simply consonant + glide + vowel). Unlike High-tone syllable reduction, this process stops short of complete tonal de-linking. These experiments aim to provide a complete picture of syllable reduction patterns in Naxi. It is argued that the notions of floating tones and tonal reassociation can be usefully applied to the Naxi data.

Auditory and acoustic data were produced from recordings of a Glaswegian English speaker in conversational and reading modes. Clearly different intonational systems were used in the two modes. The reading style used an intonation similar to that used in standard British intonation (the intonation of ‘Received Pronunciation’ (RPI)). The conversational style was an example of the type of intonation used in a number of cities in the north of the UK (Urban North British Intonation (UNBI)), characterised by a default intonation involving rising or rising-slumping nuclear pitch patterns. This speaker illustrates a clear-cut case of intonational diglossia with a falling default tune in the one mode and a rising(-falling) default tune in the other.

Three American English diphthongs involving onsets in the back of the vowel space were investigated by means of acoustic measurements, discriminant analysis, and perceptual experiments. These diphthongs, termed DOOR/WAR, TOY, and STAR, were observed in the speech of ten young women residing in southern Michigan. The diphthongs were elicited in a variety of /b/-, /ɡ/-, and /h/-initial words (e.g. board, Boyd, and barred). Words with similar consonantal margins but different nuclei (e.g. bode, baud, and bod) were elicited, as well. The DOOR/WAR and TOY words were compared with bode and baud (and similar words with initial /ɡ/ and /h/), while the STAR words were compared with baud and bod (and similar words with initial /ɡ/ and /h/). All three methods of investigation showed that the initial part of the DOOR/WAR and TOY diphthongs more closely resembles that of bode than baud. On the other hand, the initial part of the STAR diphthong was shown to be intermediate between that of baud and that of bod.

The present study examines evidence for change in real time within the short vowel subsystem of the RP accent of English over the course of the twentieth century. It compares plots of average formant positions for the short vowels, stemming from several data corpora. It furthermore describes a change over time in the juxtaposition of the trap and strut vowels as captured in the calculated angle and distance between the two, using trap as a fixed point. This representation of a relationship in a single measurement by means of angle calculation is a methodological innovation for the sociophonetic enterprise. A value specifying the geometric relationship between two vowel positions is precise and replicable, as well as abstract enough to be comparable across data sets. Differences between ‘phonetic’ and ‘sociolinguistic’ stances on the interpretation of acoustic vowel data in formant plots and the issue of suitable vowel normalisation procedures for sociophonetics will also be discussed.

In this article, I will argue for the use of the epsilon symbol in the lexical dress set (which includes words like step, ready, said, shelf etc.) for RP. The need for this paper arises from the fact that many, but by no means all, dictionaries and linguistic treatises employ the [ē] symbol and that this symbol is neither the most accurate nor a particularly useful one, especially for foreign learners of English. An examination of current usage and its historical rationale (or lack thereof) is followed by articulatory and perceptual evidence for the dress vowel being close to the third cardinal vowel, more practical arguments, and a discussion of the issues raised.

Liverpool English (LE) is the variety of English spoken in Liverpool and much of the surrounding county of Merseyside, in the north-west of England. After London, the north-west of England is the most densely populated of all regions in England and Wales, with the population of Liverpool standing at around 450,000. LE itself is said to have developed in the middle of the 19th century, after rapid immigration from Ireland during the Irish potato famines of 1845–1847 (see Knowles 1973). Arguably as a result of this immigration, as we will see, there are some similarities between LE's phonological system and those of Irish Englishes. Of course, as we might expect, the phonological system of LE maintains its connection with other northern Englishes, too.

Australian English is a regional dialect of English which shares its phonemic inventory with Southern British English through the historical connection with the dialects of the British Isles (in particular London) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Cochrane 1989, Yallop 2003, Leitner 2004). Speakers of present-day Australian English are typically those who are born in Australia or who immigrate at an early age when peer influence is maximal. Such speakers fall into three major dialect subgroups: Standard Australian English, Aboriginal English and Ethnocultural Australian English varieties. Standard Australian English (SAusE) is the dominant dialect and is used by the vast majority of speakers. It is a salient marker of national identity, and is used in broadcasting and in public life. The Aboriginal and Ethnocultural varieties are minority dialects allowing speakers to express their cultural identity within the multicultural Australian context (Cox & Palethorpe 2006, Clyne, Eisikovits & Tollfree 2001).