This paper describes the phonetic characteristics of an unexploded palatal implosive in Hendo, a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This sound is an allophone of a palatal affricate implosive. Consideration of acoustic, aerodynamic and articulatory data obtained from various methods give a precise description of this sound.

In Spanish, /b, d, [vvplosive]/ are usually spirantized to voiced approximants in all syllabic contexts after a continuant sound. However, in North-Central Peninsular Spanish (NCS), spirantization interacts with coda devoicing, yielding voiceless fricatives. In the majority of cases, coda /b, d, [vvplosive]/ occur in stressed syllables. This work examines whether or not stress is a factor in the likelihood of frication and devoicing of coda /b, d, [vvplosive]/ in this dialect. An acoustic study was conducted of nine native speakers from NCS. These speakers were tested on nonce words with /b, d, [vvplosive]/ in coda position in both stressed and unstressed syllables. Measurements were made of vowel and consonant duration, presence and absence of frication and voicing, and voicing duration. The results show that frication is more likely in stressed syllables than in unstressed syllables. This suggests that in stressed syllables, a higher subglottal pressure produces higher airflow across the glottis, thereby favoring frication. In turn, frication inhibits voicing due to conflicting aerodynamic requirements between the two. We conclude that stress is a factor in spirantization and that it may indirectly affect the voicing properties of /b, d, [vvplosive]/.

Informal observation of Belfast speakers finds a larger number of falls in careful speaking styles than the literature would suggest is the case, since Belfast English is reported to be one of the minority varieties of English in which the rise predominates in both interrogatives and declaratives. Three different speaking styles, ranging from careful to spontaneous are elicited from twelve seventeen-year-old Belfast speakers, and the nuclear accents analysed. In the majority of speakers, there is a tendency to use more falling nuclei when the speech style is careful, and fewer or none at all in the most informal style. It is suggested that this is an attempt, in formal contexts, to emulate the prestige variety of the language, which is probably that spoken in Southern England, and uses a preponderance of falling nuclei. Female speakers show more willingness than males to use the features of the prestige variety, which may be explained by social, cultural and complex contextual reasons.

Results of an acoustic study of root-initial /t th t'/ for eleven speakers of Witsuwit'en (Athabaskan) are presented. Values averaged across speaker means suggest that Witsuwit'en ejectives have a brief period of creaky voice and slow rise time at vowel onset relative to the voiceless unaspirated stops. However, there is considerable inter-speaker variation in VOT and f0 perturbation, with negligible correlation between these measures, contrary to the predictions of the ejective typologies proposed by Lindau (1984) and Kingston (1985). Results of a perception study indicate that the ejective-voiceless unaspirated contrast is more difficult than the other laryngeal contrasts even for native listeners. Implications of the Witsuwit'en data for the categorization of ejectives are discussed.

This issue of the Journal contains further contributions to the series ‘Illustrations of the IPA’. As in the case of previous contributions, the recordings accompanying them are available at http://web.uvic.ca/ling/ipa/handbook/. Illustrations published in the Journal prior to 1998 appear in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association (IPA 1999). Later contributions will be incorporated into future editions of the Handbook.

Kéo is an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 40,000 speakers in central Flores in eastern Indonesia. Hitherto, Kéo has been linguistically undescribed. The data for this article comes from linguistic fieldwork undertaken by the author with native Kéo speakers on the islands of Flores and Bali in Indonesia, and in Canberra, Australia. Other, written sources include (Baird 2001) and (Baird 2002). Kéo has been said to belong to the Ende-Lio languages of the Bima-Sumba subgroup of the Central Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family (B. Grimes 1988, C. Grimes et al. 1997). The Central/Eastern Malayo-Polynesian grouping has been proposed by Blust, but this is not strongly supported by the comparative method. Likewise, there is very little evidence to support the notion of a Bima-Sumba subgroup at this stage. Much more linguistic work needs to be undertaken in the region before precise genetic relationships can be established.

Ega is an endangered language spoken in the south-central region of Côte d'Ivoire, in Divo Department. The precise number of speakers is not known at present; the 14th Ethnologue (Grimes 2000) reports 291 to 3,000, and notes that ‘the ethnic group is growing, but they are shifting to the Dida language because of intermarriage and other influences’. Our own preliminary and impressionistic work suggests the number of Ega speakers to be closer to the upper end of this range, perhaps around 2,000, but we note that Ega now serves a decreasing number of sociolinguistic functions, to the extent that in at least some villages Dida has replaced Ega as the primary language of daily use. It is also clear that the degree of intergenerational transmission is low in many, if not all, Ega villages.

Jicarilla Apache is an Eastern Apachean language, a member of the Athabaskan family of North American languages. The speech described here is that of one of the authors, Merton Sandoval of Dulce, New Mexico. The Apachean group is comprised of Western Apachean (Navajo; the Western Apache dialects Cibecue, San Carlos, and White Mountain; and Chiricahua and Mescalero) Eastern Apachean (Jicarilla, Lipan) and Plains Apache (formerly called Kiowa Apache). The other major groups of Athabaskan languages include the northern group of languages spoken in Alaska and Canada, and the Pacific Coast group spoken in Oregon and California. While the western Apachean languages have a well-documented member in Navajo, the eastern group is less well known, being best documented so far in the works of Goddard (1911), Hoijer (1938, 1945, 1946a, 1946b) and Jung (1999). Differences between the western and eastern groups concentrate in consonant development and the evolution of stem shape, and, to some extent, in the lexicon; however, Jicarilla resembles all other Athabaskan languages in bearing a close morphological relationship to all its relatives.