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Uspanteko is an endangered Mayan language spoken by up to 6000 people in the Guatemalan highlands. We provide an overview of the phonetics and phonology of Uspanteko, focussing on phenomena which are common in Mayan languages and/or typologically interesting. These include glottalised consonants (ejectives, implosives, and glottal stop), uvular consonants, vowel length contrasts, syllable structure, stress, and lexical tone. Tone is unusual among Mayan languages, especially in Guatemala, and the phonetic description here complements the small handful of existing descriptions of tone in Uspanteko and within the Mayan family.

 

Abstract. Fires emit sufficient sulfur to affect local and regional airquality and climate. This study analyzes SO2 emission factors andvariability in smoke plumes from US wildfires and agricultural fires, as well as theirrelationship to sulfate and hydroxymethanesulfonate (HMS) formation.Observed SO2 emission factors for various fuel types show goodagreement with the latest reviews of biomass burning emission factors,producing an emission factor range of 0.47–1.2 g SO2 kg−1 C.These emission factors vary with geographic location in a way that suggeststhat deposition of coal burning emissions and application ofsulfur-containing fertilizers likely play a role in the larger observedvalues, which are primarily associated with agricultural burning. A 0-D boxmodel generally reproduces the observed trends of SO2 and total sulfate(inorganic + organic) in aging wildfire plumes. In many cases, modeled HMSis consistent with the observed organosulfur concentrations. However, acomparison of observed organosulfur and modeled HMS suggests that multipleorganosulfur compounds are likely responsible for the observations but thatthe chemistry of these compounds yields similar production and loss rates asthat of HMS, resulting in good agreement with the modeled results. Weprovide suggestions for constraining the organosulfur compounds observedduring these flights, and we show that the chemistry of HMS can alloworganosulfur to act as an S(IV) reservoir under conditions of pH > 6 and liquid water content>10−7 g sm−3. This canfacilitate long-range transport of sulfur emissions, resulting in increasedSO2 and eventually sulfate in transported smoke. 

We present the first ultrasound analysis of the secondary palatalization contrast in Irish, analyzing data from five speakers from the Connemara dialect group. Word-initial /pʲ(bʲ),pˠ(bˠ),tʲ,tˠ,kʲ,kˠ,fʲ,fˠ,sʲ,sˠ,xʲ,xˠ/ are analyzed in the context of /iː,uː/. We find, first, that tongue body position robustly distinguishes palatalized from velarized consonants, across place of articulation, manner, and vowel place contexts, with palatalized consonants having fronter and/or higher tongue body realizations than their velarized counterparts. This conclusion holds equally for labial consonants, contrary to some previous descriptive claims. Second, the nature and degree of palatalization and velarization depend in systematic ways on consonant place and manner. In coronal consonants, for example, velarization is weaker or absent. Third, the Irish consonants examined resist coarticulation in backness with a following vowel. In all of these respects Irish palatalization is remarkably similar to that of Russian. Our results also support an independent role for pharyngeal cavity expansion/retraction in the production of the palatalization contrast. Finally, we discuss preliminary findings on the dynamics of the secondary articulation gestures. Our use of principal component analysis (PCA) in reaching these findings is also of interest, since PCA has not been employed a great deal in analyses of tongue body movement.