a b s t r ac t Prescriptive pronunciation manuals of French generally present a vocalic inventory with two low vowels: front [a] and back [ɑ]. At the same time, descriptive overviews of modern French note the tendency of the posterior vowel to merge with the anterior token, especially in unstressed position. The actual spread and conditioning factors of this alleged merger are nevertheless unknown: we are ignorant about the degree of neutralization, and it is not clear whether it is a change affecting all regions and generations in France.

have shown that in Dutch there is variation in the neutralization of tense and lax vowels before coda /. In this study, we will extend the scope of their investigation by examining the effect of coda / on preceding diphthongs. A pilot production experiment shows that diphthongs can be completely neutralized in this context and may become monophthongs. A perception experiment reveals that length serves as an important cue for listeners in the identification of vowels followed by dark I. Linguistics in the Netherlands 2012,15-26. DOI io.iO75/avt.29.o2ber

This article presents a picture of one specific category of sounds: 'affricates'. These sounds, which we find for instance in the English words jazz or catch, combine the articulation of a plosive and a fricative. Affricates constitute a challenge for phonological theory, and their underlying representation has been subject to a series of revisions throughout the history of phonology: should the articulatory duality be ref lected in the phonological representation? or are affricates rather some kind of plosive with something extra? or is the concept 'affricate' simply not relevant at all?This paper provides a more or less chronological overview of the different analyses that have been proposed in phonological theory and illustrates the crucial arguments that have been put forward in favor of, or against, specific representations.

It is commonly noted that French velar plosives tend to take a fronted realization when followed by a front vowel. These observations are generally not accompanied by representative data, and consequently, little is known about the actual characteristics and spread of the phenomenon. This study provides a corpus analysis of velar palatalization in contemporary French, and addresses the potential linguistic and sociolinguistic factors involved. Moreover, the synchronic results are considered in the light of the palatalization processes that took place in the history of French.

This article presents a typological overview of affricates. The inven tories of languages in the genetically balanced UPSID 1992 survey are examined with respect to different distributional characteristics of affricates, like place of articulation, voicing, and segmental attributes. Moreover, the relation between affricates, plosives, and fricatives is considered. Independently of any particular formal modelling, this study aims to provide a picture of the crosslinguistic pat terns of affricates, a category presenting many a challenge to phonological analy sis and theory.