This study investigated the phonetic characteristics of Japanese voiceless sibilants produced by Japanese learners whose native language is Bengali. We compared these to Japanese native speakers and measured M1 (weighted average) and M2 (standard deviation) via a spectral moment analysis. The analysis suggests that M1 is the main parameter for distinguishing /s/ and /ɕ/ in Japanese. On the other hand, the analysis reveals that learners cannot distinguish them clearly. In their production, the place of articulation of /s/ moves further back or approaches non-sibilant and /ɕ/ tends to be pronounced as retroflex.

Hateruma Ryukyuan, one of the Southern Ryukyuan languages, is in the transitional stage of two relatively large systemic changes, the loss of a vowel-length contrast and the phonologization of voicelessness, both reflecting complex phenomena. This paper argues that, based on the data obtained in our fieldwork and typological features, we recognize phonetic oppositions in vowel length phenomena and devoicing, and interpret them phonologically as a binary opposition in vowel length (V/Vː) and an opposition in obstruent (excluding affricates) aspiration (C/Cʰ). This study raises and seeks to address the common problem of describing a language synchronically in the transitional stage during changes, which is a universal problem in language description.

Kumagai & Kawahara (2022) found that Russian speakers tend to judge names with [Ca] to be more suitable for larger, post-evolution Pokémon characters than names with [Ci]. This result raised a new question regarding whether it is the vowel quality difference or consonant palatalization caused by [i] that affected the responses. The current experiment compared three conditions ([Ca] vs. [C^ja] vs. [Ci]) and found that names with [C^ja] were judged to be least appropriate for post-evolution characters, suggesting the important role of phonemic palatalization. The current experiment additionally showed that Russian speakers tend to judge longer names to be more suitable for post-evolution characters.