This comparative study, conducted in multicultural London, investigates the occurrence in interviews with a researcher and in constructed same-sex peer conversations of five linguistic features characteristic of London English in the speech of two groups of British-born adolescents: ethnic Bangladeshis and ethnic Chinese of Cantonese heritage. The…

Argues that contour tones in East Asian languages behave as melodic units consisting of a root node [upper] dominating a branching specification. It is also argued that, with upper as the tonal root node, no more than two rising or falling tones will contrast underlying. (49 references) (JL)

An historical account of the use of the acute accent mark in written Spanish discusses the effects of Greek, Latin, Italian, and French precursors on the early use of the accent and on its current modern use. (CB)

Following a review of related work on intonation, both phonetic and phonemic descriptions of intonation in Italian are presented. Using recordings of radio broadcasts as data, a system of assigning pitch levels to syllables was devised, based on four pitches. The close relationship between stress placement and pitch level was considered. In order…

Investigation of native Chinese speakers' acquisition of French suprasegmental features found that the subjects not only perceived the different directions of pitch but also placed them in the right categories, in spite of the differences between the use of pitch in tonal and intonational languages. (34 references) (CB)

This paper examines the problem of whether tonal representation should be considered segmental or suprasegmental. Woo's hypothesis that tone features are to be specified segmentally is discussed as well as Leben's statement that in some languages tone is suprasegmental. The following are criteria suggested as a basis for tonal representation:…

This study, the ninth in the series "Studies in the Phonology of Asian Languages," aims to analyze the phonological properties of the accentual system of Standard Colloquial Japanese on the basis of acoustic-phonetic data, especially data obtained through use of the sound spectrograph and pitch extractor. Chapters deal with functional distinctions…

Examination of the transition to purposive use of intonation with single words for two infants revealed that both clearly used rising tones to ask questions by 1.5 years of age and demonstrated widespread and gradual grammatical use of intonation. (Author/CB)

This study of 10 intonation curves, representative of speech patterns in French, entails spectrographic analysis of the variations of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration. Discriminatory auditory tests are based on semantic oppositions caused by single intonation contrasts. The seven distinctive classes called "intonemes" are: (1) minor…

The dominant trend in phonetics today--due to a large extent to generative phonology--is to discover the brain mechanisms underlying the observed behavior in speech. Among other things there is interest in attempting to find out how motor programs are stored latently, selected, activated into muscular contractions, controlled, and tailored for…

The sounds of Standard Indonesian, or Bahasa Indonesian, used in official government and private communication, are presented here. The place and manner of articulation and the distinctive features of consonants, vowels, diphthongs, and vocalic combinations are thoroughly explained through text, illustrations, and charts. Variants of…

This collection of twenty-six papers is the fourth resulting from the Polish-English Contrastive Project. The overall purpose of the project is to prepare a Polish-English contrastive grammar and to develop pedagogical materials. The basic model used for research is the transformational generative one. Among the papers on phonology, topics such as…

The sound system of English is described in all its complexity, from the relationship between spelling and pronunciation to the rules of connected speech, focusing on the methods and rationale of teaching pronunciation of English, particularly to English as a second language learners. (CB)