In his R-tickle, William Barry (Barry 1997: 35) invites others who may have pondered along similar lines ‘to offer additional complementary or alternative views’. In somewhat belatedly accepting his invitation, I would like to make some remarks on trills, on ‘molar r’, and on rhotacism, followed by some thoughts on the question of the historical primacy of trill, at least within Indo-European.

Sources of variability in the speech signal and their statistical treatment are discussed. In the experiment, a total of 3390 vowel spectra obtained from a specially constructed 100-word list read by five male and five female speakers were measured, described in terms of five variables, F1F2, F3, F4, F5 and subjected to statistical analysis. First, the 5D data are normalized, and then treated using a novel discriminant analysis based on a multi-stage comparison of pairs of classes (vowel phonemes) as represented in the data. The data of the five male and the five female voices are analyzed as two separate samples and the results are compared with those obtained using classical discriminant analysis.

The custom of lip-plate insertion, as practiced by the Chai people, has an effect on the speech of women since it alters articulators needed for speech production: the lower lip and the lower incisors. Due to the effect of this practice, women cannot produce bilabial and dental consonants in their own language. Vowels are also affected, but the presence of the lip-plate does not affect the tonal system. This study further examines ways in which the lower lip and lower incisor mutilations are compensated for, and the acoustic effects involved in the ‘lip-plate speech’ as well as its implications for phonological theory.

This paper reports on the use of nasalized post-alveolar clicks in a special version of a Chinese nursery rhyme, used in two different so-called dialect areas in China. In one, initial velar nasals are replaced with the clicks, while in Mandarin the nasalized clicks are inserted at the beginning of words with zero initials.

The place of articulation of the Korean plain affricate /c/ and the obstruents /t, s/ is articulatorily and acoustically examined in the intervocalic positions /a―a, a―i, a―u/ taken from four subjects in three dialects. The articulatory data of direct palatograms and linguograms have shown that in these contexts, the plain affricate is not post-alveolar as usually assumed in the literature, but alveolar, just like the alveolar consonants /t, s/, despite some speaker variation regarding the active articulator (tip, blade, anterodorsum). The examination of LPC data has also shown that the affricate is alveolar, like the consonants /t, s/, both for its stop part and for its frication part. The phonetic results are then confirmed by the review of Skalicková's (1960) palatogram of the affricate, and the comparison of X-ray data of the affricate /c/ to those of the Korean obstruents /t, s/ (Skalicková 1960), the Korean vowel /i/ (Han 1978) and post-alveolars in other langauges such as Czech (Danes et al. 1954) and Polish (Wierzchowska 1980). Based on the present phonetic results, we propose that, following IPA usage, the Korean plain affricate is transcribed as /ts/.

In this article we note that diacritics, both in terms of their definition by the IPA, and in studies of transcriber reliability, are treated as a single group. Further, they are usually treated as being used purely to refine the meaning of a sound and, as such, as having less status phonetically than full symbols. It is argued here that diacritics should be classified into at least two major categories, and it is shown how one of these categories is the equivalent of a ‘full’ symbol. Apart from the implications this has for reliability measures, it is argued in conclusion that a more neutral definition of diacritic by the IPA is required.

In this paper I should like to initiate discussion about an IPA diacritic, and suggest that the diacritic ought to be changed. The diacritic concerned is that for velarization.

Nuuchahnulth (PHONETICS), often referred to in the literature as Nootka, is a Wakashan language spoken by people living on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Each of thirteen Nuuchahnulth bands represents a different dialect group. Nitinaht (Diitiidath) is usually included in the Nuuchahnulth group, but it is divergent enough to be considered a separate language. The data in this illustration represent the Ahousaht (PHONETICS) dialect.

The Shipibo language is spoken by about 30,000 people in the Ucayali River valley, in the Upper Amazon watershed in the central eastern part of Peru. The language is sometimes also called Shipibo-Conibo after the two main previously distinct ethnic groups which form its speakers. It is a member of the Panoan family and thus is related to such languages as Capanahua, Amahuaca and Chacobo. Panoan languages are principally found in Peru but the family also has members in Bolivia and Brazil. This description is based on the speech of the second author, a 30-year-old male from the village of Dos Unidos de Pachitea. The Río Pachitea flows into the Ucayali, which itself forms one of the major headwaters of the Amazon.

Chickasaw is a Muskogean language spoken in south-central Oklahoma. Published descriptions of Chickasaw phonetics include Munro & Willmond (1994), Munro (to appear), and Gordon et al. (2000). The following description is a summary of the principal phonetic aspects of Chickasaw drawn primarily from these works.

Burmese is the official language of Burma. (In English, ‘Burmese’ and ‘Burma’ are also known as ‘Myanmar’, and ‘Rangoon’ as ‘Yangon’.) It is the major language of the Burmic branch of Tibeto-Burman, and is spoken natively by upwards of 30 million people in the lower valleys of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers, the central plain of Burma and the Irrawaddy Delta, and non-natively by up to another 10 million speakers of other languages in Burma.

The 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences will be held in Barcelona, August 3–9, 2003. ICPhS 2003 will be held under the auspices and sponsorship of the IPA. The first round of nominations to elect the first set of IPA representatives to the Permanent Council for the Organization of International Congresses of Phonetic Science will begin, together with the regular call for nominations to elect the IPA Council, starting in August 2002. For preliminary information on the Congress, please visit the ICPhS 2003 website at http://shylock.uab.es/icphs/

In the Illustration of Spokane<tf> by Barry Carlson and John Esling in JIPA 30, there was a misprint in the first line of page 97 in the name of the language and in the orthographic text on page 101. The Native name of the Spokane language is Npoqíniscn.