The article accounts for the phenomenon of aspiration in Jaffna Tamil, a dialect distinct form South Indian dialects of Tamil. Not being distinctive orphonologically determined, aspiration is dealt with as a prosodic feature affecting voiceless stops in various positions. Distribution and symbolic representation are handled; kymographic evidence…

Discusses rules governing the intonation of French phrases and sentences. (Text is in French.) (RM)

The effects of syllable timing and syllable sequence type on vowel sandhi in Spanish are investigated in this paper. It is argued that structuralist and generative treatments of vowel sandhi, which are characterized by generalizations about vowel "shortening" and dropping and glide formation, are inadequate because they focus exclusively…

Common internationalisms in Russian and German are listed. In general German loan-words underwent a phonetic assimilation. Even if there are overall tonal similarities, there are differences, especially in accentuation, that result from the different structures of the languages. (Text is in German.) (MS)

Questions the thesis that the emphatic English "do" can only be analyzed in terms of discourse context, as opposed to sentence structure. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Stress assignment to three- and four-syllable Italian words is not predictable by rule, but needs lexical look-up. The present study investigated whether stress assignment to low-frequency Italian words is determined by stress regularity, or by the number of words sharing the final phonological segment and the stress pattern (stress neighborhood…

Background: Disordered expressive prosody is a widely reported characteristic of individuals with autism. Despite this, it has received little attention in the literature and the few studies that have addressed it have not described its relationship to other aspects of communication. Aims: To determine the nature and relationship of expressive and…

The article handles nasalization found in Jaffna Tamil. Conclusions are based on the results of a kymographic study of nominal forms occurring in the colloquial speech of the author. Not being a distinctive vocalic element, nasalization is handled on a prosodic level, its occurrence at word and syllabic level is discussed. (CLK)

This article reports on a study to determine the role of intonation in language acquisition. Related studies are mentioned. Research methods for the study are outlined and two case studies are reviewed. Conclusions show that adult-child interaction influences not only the child's use of intonation but also his acquisition of syntax. (Text is in…

Vowel mutation in Welsh is outlined. A proposal that two classes of compounds exist in Welsh is based on the occurrence of vowel mutation in words and in certain compounds. Evidence from stress patterns and from non-phonological aspects of the grammar support this. An alternative proposal is discussed and rejected. Available from the MIT Press, 28…

Phonological data of 30 Philippine languages are presented. The languages were selected as representative of 12 minor families within the Philippine group. The data is charted for easy comparison between language families and between individual languages. The research method consists of gathering data from journal articles and unpublished…

This paper is concerned with four Scandinavian prosodemes: accent 1, accent 2, stoed, and no stoed. The aim is to establish the function of each of them, i.e., the role they play in the system of each Scandinavian language. Available from Liber Laeromedel, Box 1205, S-22105 Lund, Sweden. (Author/TL)

In Cantonese, there are cases where two semantically related monosyllabic morphemes contrast with each other by tone only. Such cases may be classified into four groups. Synchronic classification of examples may be of some pedagogical use to teachers and students of Cantonese. (CHK)