Exploring the social meaning of the ‘leader-lagger’ vowels in New Zealand English Clusters of New Zealand English (NZE) monophthongs systematically covary across speakers (Brand et al., 2021; Hurring et al., 2025), meaning information about how a speaker realises one vowel also giv...

Pronunciation of New Zealand English monophthongs varies across speakers, distinguishing ‘leaders’ from ‘laggers’ of ongoing sound changes. But do listeners make social judgements based on these vowels? Yes! doi.org/10.16995/lab... @jbhay.bsky.social @joshwilsonblack.bsky.social #LabPhon #openaccess

Psyched for this #LabPhon workshop on language and music. And the deadline for submission has been extended to March 15th! labphon.org/labphon20/pi...

Dear #LabPhon20 organizers: Will there be a registration fee for online participants presenting a digital poster? And if so do you know the exact figure yet?

#LabPhon @labphon.bsky.social

Association for Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon) | LinkedIn Association for Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon) | An international body of scholars committed to advancing knowledge on the phonetics and phonology of human languages | The Association for Laboratory P...

Hey #LabPhon community, the Association is growing its social media offerings. Join us over on LinkedIn, as well!

www.linkedin.com/company/labp...

Cross-linguistic phonetic recalibration in bilingual lexical processing The study explores phonetic recalibration as a novel method for investigating sound-category linkages across languages, by examining cross-linguistic generalization of phoneme retuning among Spanish-E...

Are sound categories separate or integrated across languages in #bilingual speakers? Phonetic recalibration suggests asymmetrical linkages across languages, in this study of cross-linguistic generalization of phoneme retuning by #Spanish–English speakers. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Adventures in /Ɂ/ The glottal stop is a speech sound with varying functions. It can occur as a phoneme in its own right, as a marker of prosodic boundaries, as a replacement of oral stops, and as the replacement for le...

What happens when a speech sound is both everywhere and nowhere? @holmit.bsky.social shows that glottal stop /ʔ/ differently affects lexical access in #German and #Maltese, in ways that are counterintuitive to its phonemic status in those languages. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #openaccess

Phrasing and prominence disambiguate clefted Relative Clauses We investigated the prosodic disambiguation of string-identical it-clefts with Connected Clauses(-Who sang? -It was [the editor] [that sang]) versus clefted Relative Clauses (-Who called? -Itwas [the ...

Without #prosody, cleft sentences hide an understudied ambiguity: "It was the man that fell" answers "Who fell?” but ALSO infinite competing questions like "Who cried?”. Prosody supports resolving such ambiguities in both #production and #comprehension. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #openaccess

A multi-cue study to the interpretation of German information-seeking and rhetorical questions The meaning of an utterance can be conveyed by a number of prosodic cues, but their relative contribution is often unclear. We tested the interpretation of German questions as information-seeking (Exp...

Is there a rhetorical question “tune”? In an active-learning scenario testing relative cue weights, individual tonal cues have more impact on question interpretation in #German than tone combinations or non-tonal cues like voice quality or duration. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Morphological effects in speech reduction are speaker specific and may partly originate from the words’ most frequent phonological context Recently, a number of studies have investigated whether the morphological status of a segment (e.g., whether a segment is part of a stem, a noun suffix, or verb suffix) affects its pronunciation. Most of these studies have focussed on English word final -s. The first aim of the current research was to extend the evidence for morpho-phonetic effects to a different word-ending. We focused on Dutch final -/ən/ as it occurs at the end of words’ stems, as the plural affix of nouns, as the plural affix of verbs, and as the infinitive affix. We found that, when inter-speaker differences are taken into account, morphological status affects the probability that the /n/ is realized as well as durational aspects of /ən/. Our second aim was to determine whether these morpho-phonetic effects can be explained by taking into account the phonological contexts the different morphological categories typically occur in. We found that the typical phonological context of words explains the morpho-phonetic effects only partially. These findings support the claim that morphology influences phonetic implementation. Moreover, they reaffirm the notion that models of word production should allow for phonetic detail in representations that are associated with lexical or morphological meaning.

“Morphological effects in speech reduction are speaker specific and may partly originate from the words’ most frequent phonological context” by Tim Zee et al.: doi.org/10.16995/lab... Published in @labphon.bsky.social / #LabPhon

Morphological effects in speech reduction are speaker specific and may partly originate from the words’ most frequent phonological context Recently, a number of studies have investigated whether the morphological status of a segment (e.g., whether a segment is part of a stem, a noun suffix, or verb suffix) affects its pronunciation. Most...

Are morphological effects on phonetic #reduction byproducts of phonological context? Patterns of reduction by #Dutch final /ən/ show that some, not all, differences across #morphological categories can be explained by words' typical #phonological context. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #openaccess #LabPhon

In #speechperception, listener expectations, e.g. about how sounds produced by men & women differ, can influence phoneme categorization. Do #L2 listeners use expectations about speaker gender even for contrasts absent from their #L1? #LabPhon #openaccess @isf-oeaw.bsky.social doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Syllable structure and lexical pitch accent in Split Croatian Contour tones in most languages are restricted to relatively sonorous syllable types. Relatively rare are languages that permit contour tones on all syllables, including less sonorous ones. There is a...

Most languages phonologically restrict #contour #tones to more sonorous syllable types. How does #Split #Croatian, a language that permits contour tone crowding on all syllables, phonetically accommodate contours even for short vowels and obstruent codas? #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

The acquisition of L2 English complex onsets by L1 Farsi speakers Much previous work has shown that sibilant-initial complex onsets (SC onsets) differ in their typological, phonological, articulatory, and acquisitional properties from other onsets. The exact mechani...

Complex onsets that begin with #sibilants differ from other complex onsets in their phonological properties, articulation, and acquisition. What makes them special?

#LabPhon #Farsi #L2Phonology #epenthesis #openaccess

doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Investigating potential MERGED and DISTINCT speakers in an ongoing merger — Evidence from production and perception This study investigates whether it is possible to use evidence from production and perception to identify different types of speakers in the study of the ongoing merger of /ʃ/ and /ç/ in Norwegian. Sp...

Can we reliably identify MERGED vs. DISTINCT speakers during ongoing sound change? #Acoustics + #perception data from #Norwegian /ʃ, ç/ show that a principled boundary between speaker groups does not exist. doi.org/10.16995/lab...
#openaccess #LabPhon @timoroettger.bsky.social @stausland.bsky.social

The effects of contextual tonal variation on Cantonese tone merging Previous studies on Cantonese tone merging have examined monosyllabic materials so far, yet disyllabic words are common in daily conversation. Sound change often originates from a pool of synchronic v...

Q: How does tonal coarticulation in disyllabic words of #Cantonese contribute to tone merging and inform research on #soundchange? A: The two interact dynamically, with carryover effects in extreme tonal contexts emerging as an important source of change. #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

When a tone in #Huaiyuan #Chinese changes to sound like another is it a perfect copy, or can listeners still hear a difference? An investigation of tone sandhi suggests that neutralization of perceptual categories can override subtle acoustic differences. doi.org/10.16995/lab...
#LabPhon #openaccess

Convening for #LabPhon20 in Montreal is an opportunity to celebrate 40 years of #LabPhon.

We invite the ALP community to gather videos, pictures, memories, & artifacts from the last 4 decades, for presentation in Montreal. To help curate and organize materials, please contact labphon20@gmail.com.

The conference website for #LabPhon20 is now live: labphon.org/labphon20/home

#LabPhon 20 will happen in #Montréal, Québec, Canada, June 26–28, 2026, with additional pre-conference events on June 25. The call for papers and proposals for satellite workshops will be circulated in late August 2025.

We are excited to announce our #LabPhon Association's 2025 off-season programming, a series of three events on #prosody and #suprasegmentals. All events are scheduled during July and August, and they're FREE for ALP members. 😎 🌞 Info and registration are available here: labphon.org/content/summ...

A new perspective on the development of Quebec French rhotic vowels Quebec French is reportedly developing rhoticity, with low F3 resulting from a bunched or retroflexed tongue (like English /ɚ/), in some or all of the front mid rounded vowels /ø, œ, œ̃ /. The source ...

How do rare sound changes, like the development of rhotic vowels, actuate and spread? @massimolipari.github.io and @msonderegger.bsky.social show that rhotacization of 3 #QuebecFrench vowels emerges from an interplay of social + phonological pressures. #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

New insights into German #prosody! How do speakers & listeners distinguish utterance-medial vs. utterance-final #intonation boundaries in #German? Subtle differences in intonation, particularly in the rhyme's f0, are key cues for listeners. #LabPhon #openaccess #kinematics doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Final Devoicing before it happens: A large-scale study of word-final obstruents in French This paper investigates the phonetic precursors of Final Devoicing in a large corpus of natural French speech. We argue that this evaluation should consider the magnitude of the [voice] contrast, rath...

Is final devoicing as well-understood as we think? A new #LabPhon paper uses large #French corpora + Bayesian modeling to show its phonetic precursors fit typology better when viewed as multidimensional contrast neutralization. #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Learning new speech sounds in remote and in-person protocols: Benefits, drawbacks, and considerations for future research In-laboratory training of novel speech sounds has provided significant insight into how adult language learners learn new sounds. However, this training is often costly in terms of time in lab for par...

New in #LabPhon: How well do adult language learners acquire new sound contrasts, in remote vs. in-laboratory environments? Results show that both paradigms result in learning, but there are trade-offs in both protocol types. @m2b2.bsky.social @spplab.bsky.social #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Linguistic experience and social factors in speech perception: the case of merged speakers of Mandarin sibilants This work explores the combined effects of social expectations and a speaker’s production characteristics on the perception of alveolar versus retroflex sibilants that are variably merged in Taiwan Mandarin. The variation is socially structured in that the sibilant merger is regarded as a characteristic feature of speakers from southern Taiwan. The results of an AXB discrimination task showed that although merged speakers were outperformed by their distinct counterparts, they were able to discriminate the sibilants far beyond chance level. In an identification task with social guises, participants showed a pattern reflecting the implicit bias that a southern-labeled talker is less likely to produce retroflexes, and hence use the merged form, than a northern-labeled talker. Interestingly, merged participants were again shown to be less sensitive to frication noise cues, but they more readily switched between the social and acoustic cues than distinct participants. Together, these results indicate that frequent encounters with distinct forms in a speech community with large interspeaker variation might help merged speakers remain sensitive to phonological distinctions that they do not carry. Merged speakers might have been desensitized to the acoustic cues to some degree; however, they appear to use other cues to achieve coherent speech perception whenever possible.

New in @labphon.bsky.social / #LabPhon > “Linguistic experience and social factors in speech perception: the case of merged speakers of Mandarin sibilants” by Sang-Im Lee-Kim and Hsiang-Yu Tung: doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Linguistic experience and social factors in speech perception: the case of merged speakers of Mandarin sibilants This work explores the combined effects of social expectations and a speaker’s production characteristics on the perception of alveolar versus retroflex sibilants that are variably merged in Taiwan Ma...

How are social expectations employed in cases of mergers in progress? A study of #TaiwanMandarin #sibilants finds that merged speakers may be somewhat desensitized to acoustic cues, but they readily employ social cues in speech perception. #sociophonetics #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Remote data collection in the study of ongoing sound change in Spanish – a comparative analysis In this paper, I look at Canary Islands Spanish /p b/ lenition from a comparative perspective by examining the speech of the same participants produced on different occasions and under different circumstances: A field experiment consisting of reading sentences, self-recorded reproductions of the same sentences, self-recorded monologues and instant messaging app recordings of spontaneous speech. The aim of the study was to test the viability of unguided self-recordings as samples used to study stop weakening and to find out whether the use of such a method helps minimize the observer’s paradox to arrive at more naturalistic speech. The results of the study support the viability of self-recordings as a data collection method. In addition, the findings also show that while data collection via self-recordings poses some challenges, it also helps gather more naturalistic productions in the spontaneous monologue condition. The data lead to the conclusion that there is an interplay between task type and recording method, with the former playing a key role in changing speech styles and pronunciation patterns of Canarian Spanish speakers. 

New in @labphon.bsky.social / #LabPhon > “Remote data collection in the study of ongoing sound change in Spanish – a comparative analysis” by Karolina Broś: doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Remote data collection in the study of ongoing sound change in Spanish – a comparative analysis In this paper, I look at Canary Islands Spanish /p b/ lenition from a comparative perspective by examining the speech of the same participants produced on different occasions and under different circu...

Can unsupervised self-recordings help researchers capture more naturalistic speech when studying #soundchange? 🎤📱
A study of /p b/ #lenition in Canary Islands #Spanish shows that self-recordings pose some challenges but help reduce the observer’s paradox. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

We're delighted to announce that #LabPhon20 will be held in Montréal, Québec, Canada, in the (North American) summer of 2026, with the theme “Looking back and looking forward.” Dates, thematic sessions, invited speakers and further information will be announced by the organizing committee. #LabPhon

Image of a text: a screenshot of a list of journal published articles at Laboratory of Phonology

Two new articles published in @labphon.bsky.social / #LabPhon. Check them out at: www.journal-labphon.org/articles/

At the margins: phonology and phonetics of Zongozotla Totonac glottalization Glottal stops and glottalized (“laryngealized”) vowels in Totonac and Tepehua languages are crucial for historical reconstructions, but their phonological and phonetic properties have often posed anal...

How marginal can phonological contrasts be? In Zongozotla #Totonac, phonation type and glottal stops are phonologically contrastive, but they are weakly differentiated phonetically and the glottal stops only surface phrase-finally. #LabPhon #openaccess #marginalcontrast doi.org/10.16995/lab...