Erring on the side of phonology

Speakers of Standard Dutch increasingly realise coda /r/ (e.g. paar) as a bunched or retroflex approximant. This coda variant is categorically distinct from onset /r/ (e.g. reizen), which is typically pronounced as a uvular trill or fricative, or an alveolar trill or tap. In this study, we investigate whether coda and onset /r/ in Dutch behave as distinct phonological categories. We present new articulatory and acoustic data on the realisation of /r/ in sandhi contexts, including the fake geminate context (e.g. paar reizen). Ultrasound data show that the presence of an onset /r/ conditions the deletion of a bunching gesture (typical of the coda /r/ realisation) from /r#r/ sequences. Nevertheless, the presence of a coda /r/ in such sequences is still acoustically traceable. We interpret these findings as a result of shared phonological identity between onset and coda /r/, and discuss them in the context of the place of allophony within models of grammar.casl31pub3575pub

Book Review : \u27The internationalisation of legal education: the future practice of law\u27, edited by William van Caenegem and Mary Hiscock. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014, ISBN 9781783474530, (Hb) 316pp

The fronting of the high-back /uː/ and /ʊ/, as currently seen in Southern British English (SBE), is a rare opportunity to study two similar sound changes at different stages of their phonetic development: /uː/-fronting is a more advanced change than /ʊ/-fronting. Since the fronting in both vowels is restricted from applying before a following final /l/ (e.g., in words like 'fool 'or 'pull'), we can exploit the difference in the phonetic advancement of /uː/ and /ʊ/-fronting to illuminate the nature of ‘fuzzy contrasts’ affecting vowel+/l/ sequences in morphologically complex words. As recent results show that /uː/-fronting is partially limited in 'fool-ing '(but not in monomorphemes like 'hula'), we ask whether similar morphological constraints affect /ʊ/ followed by /l/ (e.g., 'bully 'vs. 'pull-ing'). Simultaneously, we consider the question of what phonological generalization best captures the interaction between vowel fronting, /l/-darkening, and morphological structure. We present ultrasound data from 20 speakers of SBE representing two age groups. The data show that morphologically conditioned contrasts are consistent for /uː/+/l/, but variable and limited in size for /ʊ/+/l/. We relate these findings to the debate on morphology-phonetics interactions and the emergence of phonological abstraction