Conducting a video-based experiment in English, Japanese and Thai, Matsumoto et al. (2017) report that deictic verbs are more frequently used when the motion is not just toward the speaker but also into his/her functional space (i.e. functional HERE of the speaker) defined by limits of interaction and visibility as well as when the motion is accompanied by an interactional behaviour of the Figure such as greeting the speaker. They claim that directional venitive prepositional phrases (henceforth PPs) like toward me do not exhibit this feature, though. This paper aims to reevaluate these proposals (Matsumoto et al. 2017) in Ilami Kurdish (henceforth IK), thereby figuring out whether the functional nature of deictic verbs observed in the three studied languages is also attested in this dialect. In line with the findings reported by Matsumoto et al. (2017), results of this research reveal that the semantics of venitive verbs of motion in IK is spatial and functional at the same time. In other words, these verbs are more often used in the verbal descriptions of the IK participants, when the Figure shares a functional space with the speaker induced by limits of interaction and visibility, and also when he/she smiles at or greets the speaker. Importantly, results show that venitive PPs in IK can be functional in nature or add some functional meaning (in addition to their spatial meaning) to the verb, so that participants utilize venitive adpositions along with the venitive verb to add emphasis on the kind of motion (to be a venitive one) and express that the Figure would be “very close” to the speaker at the end of motion.

These findings suggest that although the functional nature of venitive verbs of motion seems to have a universal foundation, languages may also exhibit some nuances in the functional scope of these expressions.

This paper presents two small-scale acoustic phonetic studies investigating the pronunciation of sibilant-stop (ST) consonant clusters in Polish, and in the L2 speech of L1 Polish learners of English. In English, aspiration of fortis stops is not attested in the post-/s/ context. Rather, short-lag voice onset time (VOT) measures are observed in L1 English in post-/s/ stop consonants, a phonetic weakening that renders them phonetically similar in terms of VOT to lenis stops in initial position. In Polish, both voiced and voiceless stops may appear after sibilant fricatives. The acoustic results suggest that (1) L1 Polish does not weaken its stops in ST clusters, and (2) that more L1 Polish speakers exhibit some weakening in their L2 English clusters as a function of proficiency, but do not produce native-like VOTs in ST sequences. Implications of these findings for L2 speech research and the phonological status of ST clusters are discussed.

The Finnish epic Kalevala is written in the so-called Finnic “Kalevala-metre”, typical of Finnic oral poetry. Its main features are the use of trochaic tetrameter (octosyllabic lines), alliteration, assonance, sound parallelisms and the repetition of words. It is difficult to retain those features in translation but one of the early successful attempts was the first full English translation directly from Finnish by William Forsell Kirby (1907). Kirby’s translation was a source of inspiration and the linguistic model for The Story of Kullervo, a tale written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (probably in 1912), based on one of the Kalevala’s stories. Our aim is to compare those texts.

This paper has been inspired by Roberto Dapit’s study of 2021. My aim is to show the sense of using what can be called “perceptual etymology” (analogically to “perceptual dialectology”) along with and in contrast to the “scholarly etymology”.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s accent is often used as an illustration of the elite pronunciation heard among the north-eastern US upper classes until roughly the mid 20th century. Known under several names and often considered a mixture of British and American features, this variety is frequently identified with the American Theatre Standard, a norm popularized by acting schools in the early 20th century. Working on the assumption that Roosevelt is an exemplar of the north-eastern standard, the aim of the current study is a preliminary acoustic exploration of his accent with the aim of assessing the plausibility of such comparisons, focusing on the dress, trap, bath, start and lot vowels. Density plots created based on F1 and F2 measured in eight radio speeches were used to examine the relative position of these vowels in the vowel space. Linear mixed-effects regression was then used to model F1 and F2 in selected pairs of vowels to determine whether the differences along the two formant dimensions are significant. The results confirm a conclusion reached in an earlier auditory study (Brandenburg, Braden 1952) according to which Roosevelt’s bath was variable between [æ] and a lower and retracted [a], a vowel quality found in Eastern New England and in American Theatre Pronunciation. At the same time, a merged start/lot vowel in Roosevelt’s speech makes it unjustified to fully identify his accent with the latter variety.