In several dialects of English notably in the southern part of Britain (but excluding Wales), a velarised or “dark” allophone of /l/ occurs syllable-finally, and post-vocalically in syllable-final consonant clusters (Wells 1982; Gimson 1980). A variant of this velarised [l], typically associated with Cockney, but increasingly admitted as a feature of South-Eastern Urban English, is a “vowelised” or vocalised form realised as a non-syllabic back vocoid (approximately [Y] or a rounded equivalent [ö] or [ʊ] (Wells 1982; Hughes and Trudgill 1986)). Thus “milk” may be realised variously as [mIlk], [mIYk], [mIök] or [mIʊk].

In most varieties of modern Greek, the consonant /l/ is typically a “clear” [l] in most environments, as in /ala/ [ala] αλλ⋯ ‘but’; but with positional variation involving also palatalised and/or palatal variants, as in /skili/ [skiļi] σχυλ⋯ ‘dog’. In a number of areas of northern Greece, velarised [⃒]-type pronunciations may also be found, as they may also be in those areas of Attica and Biotia where Albanian/Greek bilingualism is or has been common (see Trudgill & Tzavaras 1975 – most varieties of Albanian have a phonemic contrast between /l/ and /l/). In his book The Generative Interpretation of Dialect (1972), however, Brian Newton also points out that ‘in the Sphakiá area of Crete /l/ has a retroflex pronunciation before back vowels’. This feature is also cited by Kondosopoulos (1959, 1969, 1974) and Pangalos (1955), who also mention some other areas of Crete where a similar phenomenon occurs. (Following Kondosopoulos and Pangalos, Newton also indicates that /l/ → Ø or /l/ → /w/ in certain Cretan villages.)

Ferguson (1972) described the distribution of æ and æ: in his native Philadelphia speech and pointed out that these two varieties of low, front vowel have different distributions in different dialects. He ended his paper with a plea for further data collection in more dialects that would lead ‘to better understanding of the synchronic system and to more satisfactory hypotheses about the diachrony’ (1972:273). This paper is in response to his request and consists of a description of the distribution of æ and æ: in my native Melbourne speech.

This paper aims to show the relationship between the writing system of Fante and its spoken form, and to explore the extent to which Fante orthography can be said to be phonemic. This involves a consideration of the correlation between the vowel and consonant phonemes and their symbolization in the orthography, and of the account taken of nasalization, length, elision, assimilation, and vowel harmony. The proposed Unified Akan Orthography (The Bureau of Ghana, Legon: 1978) is discussed in this light. The term Akan is used to refer to the Fante and Twi dialects of Southern Ghana.

Speculation concerning the future direction of linguistic evolution, despite its obvious pitfalls, has a long tradition, not to mention attraction, in linguistics. In the French domain, one need only think of Pulgram (1967) or of various works by Ashby concerning « Future French » (1974, 1977), both of whom reflect on ideas present in French scholarship dating from the early decades of this century (e.g. Meillet, 1921, 1936; Vendryes, 1923). Recent work in typology, showing apparently orderly progression from one language state to another, has buttressed speculative efforts, as have many of the results of sociolinguistics, where clear trends in age or social profiles often allow one to infer directionality and even end result on the basis of ongoing change.

It is widely recognized that during the eighteenth century a sound change began in English concerning the consonant /r/. This change, referred to as “R dropping’ (Wells, 1982a: 218), involved the elision of /r/ in non-prevocalic positions.

The two phonemes which, in Standard English and the dialects of southern English, inasmuch as the latter deviate from the standard, have shown a tendency to be lost, /h/ and /r/1, at least in certain positions, have been fully retained in all varieties of Irish English. There is no /h/-dropping (Wells 1982:23ff.) in Irish English and /r/ is maintained in all positions where it is indicated by the orthography. The orthography offers a convenient yardstick here as the two innovative occurrences of /r/ in Received Pronunciation, linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ (Gimson 1980:208f.) are not recognized orthographically and are not found in Irish English either.

Chengdu speech is the received pronunciation among the various Sichuan dialects spoken by ten million people in Southwest China. In this short paper, I intend to discuss the characteristics of the initials of Chengdu speech as compared with Standard Chinese. The following abbreviations and conventions are used: CDH = Chengduhua, i.e. Chengdu speech of Chinese. PTH = Putonghua, Standard Chinese based on Beijing pronunciation. CPA = the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. Chinese characters are transliterated into CPA first when they are cited as examples. A phonetic transcription of CDH pronunciation follows, in square brackets. Tone symbols are placed before the CDH syllable: [̄] High Level, [̖] Low Falling, [̀] High Falling, [̬] Fall-rise. For PTH the tone symbol is placed above the CPA nuclear vowel letter e.g. mā High Level, má High Rising, mǎ Fall-rise, mà High Falling.