The present work begins with a phonetic description of the acceptable French /R/ and descriptions of several allophones of English /R/ which must be avoided while learning the French. Various theories are discussed concerning the relationship between the position of the /R/ in an utterance and the difficulty students have in pronouncing it…

The characteristics of French nasal vowels in the case of various CVCV combinations are studied. A set of CVCV utterances was read by speakers (5 males and 5 females) and analyzed using predictive coding techniques. The consonant consisted of voiced stops, unvoiced stops, nasal consonants... while the vowel V was one of 4 nasal French vowels.…

This paper discusses phonological processes which assign ultimate phonetic realizations to function words. Stress patterns of function words are studied along with phonetic variation between strong and weak forms. The Auxiliary Reduction Rule is extended to account for the phonetic variation. (Author/AM)

An analysis of vowel distribution patterns in Rawas, an Austronesian language spoken in Sumatra, is presented. The language has six vowels, each with long and short variants in complementary distribution, and five diphthongs that occur generally in open syllables. It is proposed, based on this analysis, that each Rawas syllable is precisely two…

This article argues for a set of ordered rules for morphophonemic alternations in the N-class in Swahili, positing /n/ as the class prefix and an abstract segment as stem initial in certain words. The rules are: (1) liquids and the labial glide become corresponding voiced stops; (2) the nasal prefix assimilates in coronality and backness, and…

The feature system of Nitinaht is characterized by extensive exploitation of the possible glottal and pharyngeal articulatory notions. The proposed orthography for Nitinaht partially reflects the distinctive feature composition of segments, in particular for affricate (delayed release) and glottalized (constricted glottis) consonants. (Author)

Traditional descriptions of Italian phonology have occasionally suggested that some type of connection exists between "raddoppiamento sintattico" (RS) and the word internal consonant length contrast. (RS is defined as a systematic lengthening of the first consonant of the second word in a two-word sequence in certain syntactic and phonological…

This paper discusses Esperanto as a planned language and refutes three myths connected to it, namely, that Esperanto is achronical, atopical, and apragmatic. The focus here is on a synchronic analysis. Synchronic variability is studied with reference to the structuralist determination of "marginality" and the dynamic linguistic…

This paper discusses the English verbal inflectional system within the lexicalist framework. A lexicalist approach to syntax is one in which all syntactic grammatical relations, lexical items, and the result of transformations are subject to semantic interpretation. That is, semantic information cannot be generated by syntactic rules. A filtering…

Very sharp discrimination functions for the timing of voice onset relative to stop release characterize perceptual boundaries between certain pairs of stop consonants for adult speakers of many languages. To explore how these discriminations depend on experience, their development was studied among Kikuyu children, whose native language contains…