Abstract Australian languages have often been noted for their high rates of phonological uniformity cross-linguistically; investigations into the phonetics of these languages, however, have revealed rich phonetic variation below the phonological level. In the current study, the phonetic correlates of stress in thirteen Australian languages with fixed initial stress placement are investigated using corpus phonetics methods and based on archival field recordings of natural speech. Across these languages, a high f0 peak is a common correlate of initial stress, as has often been cited in the literature; increased vowel duration is similarly common. Effects of onset consonant or post-tonic consonant lengthening have been noted for many Australian languages and are sometimes found in this study, though the lengthening may only apply to one or two of stops, nasals, and glides.

Abstract This study examines the utterance-initial prosodic marking of sarcasm in English and its perception in listeners who did and listeners who did not self-identify as being on the autism spectrum. We ask (i) whether speakers use prosody to mark sarcasm in the early, ‘pre-target’ portion of an utterance (that is, in the portion before a ‘target’ word most closely associated with the sarcastic intent occurs), (ii) whether individuals vary in how they mark sarcasm, (iii) whether listeners reliably recognize sarcasm from pre-target prosody alone, and (iv) whether recognition accuracy varies by speaker or self-identified autistic traits. Eight American English speakers were recorded producing utterances presented in contexts conducive to either sarcasm or sincerity. Pre-target parts were presented in a two-alternative forced-choice experiment to individuals who either did (n=51) or did not (n=44) self-identify as being on the autism spectrum, and were examined for syllable duration and f0-related properties (maximum, minimum, range, and wiggliness). Results show that speakers distinguish sarcasm and sincerity in the pre-target region with duration being the most salient marker. Most listeners recognize sarcasm from pre-target fragments, but there is variation in how well each speaker is perceived. Whether the listener self-identified as being on the autism spectrum or not does not predict sarcasm and sincerity recognition accuracy. The results provide evidence that utterance-initial prosody contributes to sarcasm recognition, with the proviso that speaker and listener variation be taken into account.

Abstract This article analyses prestopped nasals in Umbuygamu (also known as Morrobolam), a Lamalamic (< Paman < Pama-Nyungan) language of northeastern Australia. The analysis focuses on three features that are of typological interest. First, prestopped realizations have a plosive phase that is significantly longer than the nasal phase, and that is voiceless by default. While classic accounts of the origin of prestopping predict a short and voiced plosive phase, the existence of long and voiceless phases may be due to phonologization and typical location at a prosodic boundary, as suggested by work on parallel cases elsewhere in Australia, specifically in Arandic. Second, prestopped nasals also have preaspirated realizations in Morrobolam, which have not been reported in the literature on prestopping. These are typologically similar to voiceless nasals as found in some Tibeto-Burman languages, in particular the type with aspiration preceding the nasal. Third, there is significant variation in the nature of nasal plosion in prestopped realizations, with some speakers showing relatively long and loud bursts. I argue that these may form a pathway for the emergence of preaspiration from prestopping, with turbulence taking over from a hold-burst structure as the signature characteristic of the non-nasal phase. I also suggest that long and loud bursts may be due to a difference in the mechanics of velum opening, with a glottalic airstream aerodynamically reinforcing muscle-controlled opening of the velum.

Abstract Mizo (ISO 639-3 code: lus) is a Tibeto-Burman tone language spoken in Mizoram, India. This work provides an acoustic-phonetic description of Mizo tones spoken in Aizawl. The acoustic features of Mizo tones are modelled after the four tones in the language. The patterns of the f0 contours of the four Mizo tones in this study indicate that three have dynamic f0 contours. The analysis also shows that the f0 slope is crucial in distinguishing the four Mizo tones. Discrete Cosine Transform is used to obtain the average f0 and the f0 slope features of the Mizo tone contours represented by the first three Discrete Cosine Transform coefficients. The first three coefficients of the Discrete Cosine Transform, which are associated with the average f0 and the f0 slope of the four Mizo tone f0 contours, along with the tonal duration, can automatically classify the Mizo tones with an average accuracy of 87.12% using a quadratic discriminant analysis.

Abstract Vowel deletion is frequent in the Chichicastenango dialect of K’iche’ (Maya). Whereas deletion in content words is reportedly predictable based on vowel quality, syllable structure and stress, deletion in function words is much more variable. This article investigates vowel deletion in a corpus of spontaneous, monologic speech. The results show that deletion in content words is highly regular, occurring to lax vowels in unstressed, CV syllables adjacent to the stressed syllable. A difference can be observed between vowels belonging to stress domain internal morphemes and extrametrical morphemes. Deletion in extrametrical morphemes is somewhat less regular, and does not occur in word-final syllables. In function words, vowel deletion is sensitive to similar conditions to those that affect content words, but is highly variable and is influenced by the phrase-level context.

Abstract In spoken language, major prosodic boundaries can be marked by three types of prosodic cues: pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. Although these cues appear cross-linguistically, their relative weight in signaling boundaries is considered language-specific. However, very little is known about prosodic phrasing in the production of Dutch. Past studies on Dutch prosodic phrasing mostly focused on boundary perception, suggesting that pause is the most important cue in Dutch. The present study examined the use of boundary cues in the production of Dutch utterance-medial intonational phrase (IP) boundaries. We investigated these boundaries in two syntactically different contexts: coordinated name sequences and compound sentences. In both contexts, the IP boundary reflects the syntactic structure of the utterance. In the name sequences, the boundary serves as the only means to disambiguate a global syntactic ambiguity, while in the compound sentences it aligns with a clause ending. Sixteen native Dutch speakers produced the target utterances with or without an IP boundary. We measured pitch height, IP-final and pre-IP-final syllable durations, and pause duration at the boundary. All three types of cues were used to mark IP boundaries, but speakers used the pause cue to a larger extent in the name sequences than in the compound sentences. Additionally, we found that final lengthening was the most consistently used IP boundary-marking cue. Our results thus challenge the notion of pause as the most dominant cue in Dutch. They suggest that pre-boundary lengthening may be the most consistently used cue, at least, from a production perspective.

Zaiwa (ISO 639-3 code: atb; Glottocode: zaiw1241) belongs to the Burmese branch of the Tibeto-Burman languages, sharing many common features with the Burmese and Achang languages of the same branch. It is primarily spoken by a subgroup of Jingpo people, who identify as ‘Zaiwa’. Beyond Zaiwa, the Jingpo people encompass four distinct subgroups, each conversing in unique linguistic variations, namely Jingpo (景颇), Langsu (浪速), Leqi (勒期), and Bola (波拉). Jingpo is distinctively affiliated with the Jingpo branch of the Tibeto-Burman languages, whereas the other three languages, including Zaiwa, are categorized within the Burmese branch (He, 2016). The majority of Zaiwa speakers are found in Luxi (潞西), Yingjiang (盈江), Longchuan (陇川), Ruili (瑞丽), Lianghe (梁河), and Wanding (畹町) counties within the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture (德宏傣族景颇族自治州) of Yunnan province (云南省) as well as the Shan and Kachin states in Myanmar. Zaiwa is widely used in Zaiwa-dominant areas or communities with a significant Zaiwa presence. It is used not only in daily life contexts, such as among family members, villages, markets, and shops, but also in a range of social sectors, including in government and judicial offices, as well as on radio and broadcasting stations. Among the Jingpo languages, Zaiwa has the largest number of users. Individuals who speak Zaiwa often speak languages of other Jingpo subgroups in addition to Mandarin Chinese. Due to the extensive promotion and dissemination of Mandarin, particularly in educational and media contexts, Mandarin has emerged as the predominant second language for the youth within the community. Moreover, in neighboring regions or mixed communities where the Zaiwa subgroup is prominent, individuals from other ethnic groups such as the Achang, Han, Dai, and Lisu also frequently speak Zaiwa. According to the statistics from China’s Sixth National Population Census in 2010, the total population of the Jingpo ethnic group is approximately 140,000. There were over 80,000 Zaiwa speakers within China, constituting more than 60% of the total Jingpo ethnic population in the country (He, 2016). Scholars such as Xu and Xu (1984), Dai (1989), Kong (2001), Pan (2014), He (2016), Lu and Kong (2019), and Lu et al. (2025) have conducted studies on the phonetics of Zaiwa.

Abstract This article presents an acoustic analysis of vowel quality and duration in Chichicastenango K’iche’ (Maya) tense, lax and glottalized vowels through a controlled speech production experiment. The results show that most of the five tense–lax pairs can be distinguished through F1 and F2, with the high and mid lax vowels lower than their tense counterparts and the low lax vowel higher than its tense counterpart. Glottalized high and mid vowels have lax quality while glottalized low vowels have tense quality. The high lax vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ and their glottalized counterparts show a high degree of overlap with surrounding categories and appear to be in process of being lost, though they retain distinct phonological behavior. Glottalized vowels are longer than tense vowels, which are longer than lax vowels. The voice quality of glottalized vowels is highly variable and is influenced by context. Realizations with full closures are almost entirely absent. Neither vowel quality nor voice quality results show clear evidence in favor of either a one-segment or two-segment analysis for glottalized vowels.