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Clicks, interdentals, retroflex fricative trills or even front rounded vowels are not 'staggeringly popular' among the languages of the world. However, they are still there, being, ultimately, pronounceable and perceivable. So what makes them more difficult and less popular? Articulation, acoustics, or factors related to acquisition, inventory organisation and social transmission? What are the interrelations between those factors? From Trubetzkoy's markedness theory and Jakobson's description of the order of phoneme acquisition, to Lindblom and Maddieson's articulatory elaboration analysis of phonological inventories, linguists have long been interested in the concept of relative ease and difficulty of sound classes, and this interest has been reinforced recently by advances in research on self-organisation and evolution in phonetics and phonology.
This session aims to discuss the properties and behaviours of such 'exotic' sounds. We invite contributions aiming at investigation of these marked sound classes from a phonetic - but also phonological - point of view. Suggested topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:
(1) Articulatory and acoustic description of 'exotic'
sounds;
(2) Investigation of 'exotic' phonological systems;
(3) Phonological behaviour (e.g. phonotactics) of 'exotic' sound classes;
(4) Sound change involving 'exotic' articulations;
(5) Sociolinguistics of 'exotic' sounds;
(6) Acquisition of 'exotic' sound classes;
(7) 'Exotic' sounds in foreign language acquisition;
(8) Geographical distribution of 'exotic' inventories.
Abstracts, 300-400 words long, should be submitted by email to wjarek@ifa.amu.edu.pl. Deadline for submissions: 1 February, 2005. Notification of acceptance by 28 February, 2005.
PLM 2005 Exotic Phonetics Session Conveners
Jarosław Weckwerth
Dawid Pietrala
Grzegorz Michalski