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

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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

Take a short SURVEY to help #LabPhon20 organizers understand what might constrain in-person conference attendance, given issues of immigration, funding, and accessibility. We strive to make a realistic and equitable conference plan, including for students. ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

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 [email protected].

CALL FOR PAPERS, #LabPhon20: Deadline to submit abstracts is Dec 1, 2025. Abstract guidelines and submission link available in Oct 2025. CALL FOR SATELLITE WORKSHOP PROPOSALS: Deadline for satellite workshop proposals is Nov 1, 2025. Events' date is June 25, 2026. labphon.org/labphon20/ca...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

Vowel and consonant duration vary inversely in Australian #Yolngu language Djambarrpuyŋu, so what’s contrastive? A pair of #speechproduction and #speechperception studies show that V length is contrastive, though both V & C duration influence perception. #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

How is pharyngealization realized in across linguistic contexts? In #Tashlhiyt, it's signaled in #coronals by a lowered tongue body & lowered F2 in nearby vowels, which can extend into larger phonetic domains. doi.org/10.16995/lab... #openaccess #LabPhon @phbuech.bsky.social @annehermes.bsky.social

Most models of #word recognition assume the input is faithful to #phonological specifications in the #lexicon, but it's not always the case. Results from #lenition in #Mawng & #Iwaidja explore how recognition occurs in such scenarios. @bjbaker.bsky.social #LabPhon #openaccess doi.org/10.16995/lab...

How does dialect exposure affect perceptual adaptation to a novel vowel shift? New results from regional US dialects explore listeners' behaviors via lexical decision tasks to understand the mechanisms governing perceptual adaptation and generalization. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

In #Chicago the #vowels LOT & THOUGHT are in flux—how do speakers maintain their contrast? #Articulatory & perceptual results from @jhavenhill.bsky.social show that lip rounding, not necessarily tongue position, provides visual & auditory differentiation. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Linguists have often observed prosody-syntax interactions in #informationstructure marking, but do speakers rely less on #prosody when #clefting already marks focus? In #Mandarin #Chinese, such tradeoffs aren't found in production or perception: doi.org/10.16995/lab... #LabPhon #openaccess

In word shadowing tasks, do participants imitate formant frequencies or vowel shifts? Given the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, talkers imitate normalized phonetic properties of NCVS vowels, not the overall high F1,F2 frequencies of the model talker. #openaccess #LabPhon doi.org/10.16995/lab...

Hello, Bluesky! This is the account for the Association for Laboratory Phonology, #LabPhon. Follow here to learn about new publications in our journal, and other Association news. #linguistics #phonetics #phonology