This study is concerned with the Bavarian German dialect feature of complementary length in vowel plus consonant sequences according to which tense (long) vowels always precede lenis stops (short closure) and lax (short) vowels always precede fortis stops (long closure). The study investigates whether a vowel length contrast is developing before fortis stops due to dialect leveling. We measured vowel and consonant duration in trochaic words differing only in vowel length which were read by 40 older and younger Bavarian and Saxon (control group) German speakers. Older Bavarians distinguished tense and lax vowels by means of vowel to vowel plus consonant ratios that indicate an inverse timing pattern. Saxons and younger Bavarians signal the tense–lax distinction independently of the following stop length. A perception test showed that this sound change in progress also affects perception. We argue for a contact-induced change which is triggered by external as opposed to internal factors.

This study reports on non-durational acoustic correlates of typologically rare word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay (KM) by focusing on two acoustic parameters – amplitude and f0. Given the unusual characteristics of the word-initial consonant contrast and its potential maintenance in domain-initial environments, this study sets to examine the extent to which amplitude and f0 can potentially characterise such a contrast in KM in addition to the cross-linguistically established acoustic correlate of closure duration. The production data involved elicited materials from sixteen KM native speakers. RMS and f0 values were measured at the start of the vowel following stops and sonorants produced in isolation (i.e. utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (i.e. utterance-medial position). Results indicate that the consonant contrast is reflected in systematic differences in (i) vowel onset amplitude and f0 following the target consonant and (ii) the ratios of amplitude and f0 across two syllables of disyllabic words. There are also effects of utterance position, manner of articulation and voicing type on the magnitude of contrast between singletons and geminates with utterance-initial voiceless stops generally showing the greatest magnitude difference. The conclusion is drawn that the KM word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast can be associated with a set of acoustic parameters alongside closure duration.

The paper presents a production experiment investigating the phonetic parameters speakers employ to differentiate Yes–No questions from string-identical statements in Akan, a West-African two-tone Kwa language. Results show that, in comparison to the statement, speakers use a higher pitch register throughout the utterance as a global parameter, and falling f0, longer duration and higher intensity as local parameters on the final syllable of the Yes–No question. Further, two perception experiments (forced-choice identification and gating) investigate the perceptual relevance of the global parameter and the local final parameters. Results show that listeners cannot assess the higher pitch register information to identify the mode of a sentence early on. Rather, identification takes place when the local phonetic parameters on the final vowel are available. The findings point to the superiority of language-specific cues in sentence mode perception. It is suggested that Akan uses a low boundary tone that associates with the right edge of the intonation phrase (L%) in Yes–No questions. The results are discussed from the point of view of question intonation typology in African languages. It is argued that a classification along the lines of functionally relevant cues is preferable to an impressionistic analysis.

Sasak is a Malayo-Sumbawan (Adelaar 2005) language spoken as a primary language in Lombok, Indonesia (see the map in Figure 1). It is estimated to be spoken by 2 million (Clynes 1995) or 2.5 million (Marli 2015) people. Sasak is reported to have four (Jacq 1998) or five (Austin 2003) major dialects, to which Austin (2003) gives informal names based on the pronunciation of the deictic words for ‘like this’ and ‘like that’: Ngenó-Ngené (central northeast, central east, and central west coasts of Lombok), Menó-Mené (central Lombok), Ngotó-Ngeté (northeastern Lombok), Ngenó-Mené, also known as Kutó-Kuté (north Lombok), and Meriaq-Meriku (south central Lombok). The dialects with the broadest geographical distribution are Menó-Mené and Ngenó-Ngené.

Madurese (bhâsa Madhurâ) is a Malayo-Polynesian language spoken primarily on the island of Madura and a number of regions in East Java, Indonesia. Its further subgrouping has remained a matter of some dispute. Early work placed Madurese in a Malayo-Javanic subgroup containing Javanese, Sundanese, and Malay (Dyen 1963). Glottolog and Ethnologue use the more recent ‘Malayo-Sumbawan’ classification (Adelaar 2005a), which puts Malayic, Chamic, and the Balinese-Sasak-Sumbawa group into one branch with Madurese and Sundanese in two other branches, to the exclusion of Javanese. Robert Blust, rejecting the Malayo-Sumbawan hypothesis, tentatively places Madurese in a Malayo-Chamic subgroup (Blust 2009), but also suggests (Blust 2010) that, as Madurese is lexically similar to Malay but phonologically and morphologically quite different, it may once have subgrouped with Javanese and later underwent heavy relexicalization due to language contact (see also discussion in Kluge 2017: 3).

Of the official languages of South Africa, Afrikaans has the widest geographical, demographic and racial distribution (Webb 2003). According to the latest South African census of 2011 (StatsSA 2012), Afrikaans as first language is spoken by 13.5% of the country's inhabitants, only surpassed in numbers by Zulu (22.7%) and Xhosa (16%). In neighbouring Namibia, 10.4% of the population has Afrikaans as their first language. A noteworthy number of recent emigrants to United Kingdom, Australia, Europe and North America are likely to be Afrikaans speakers as well.1 A handful of elderly persons in Patagonia still speak Afrikaans; they are descendants of some 600 Afrikaans speakers who settled in Patagonia at the beginning of the 20th century (Du Toit 1995, Coetzee et al. 2018).