Full Description
The second edition of this best selling textbook introduces undergraduates to the concepts, terminology and representations needed for an understanding of how English is pronounced around the world. Assuming no prior knowledge, it guides the reader through the vocal tract and explains how the sounds of speech are made, offering an accessible and expanded introduction to areas including transcription, vowels and acoustic analysis. As far as possible, it uses naturally-occurring conversational speech so that readers are familiar with the details of everyday talk (and not just the careful pronunciations presented in dictionaries). The book also includes a new concluding chapter that works through a piece of spoken data to show the reader how a more complete phonetic analysis can be conducted.
Contents
List of figures and tables; To readers; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction to phonetics; 2. Overview of the human speech mechanism; 3. Representing the sounds of speech; 4. The larynx, voicing and voice quality; 5. Vowels; 6. Approximants; 7. Plosives; 8. Fricatives; 9. Nasals; 10. Glottalic and velaric airstreams; 11. Sounds and structures; 12. Conclusion Glossary; Discussion of the exercises; Further reading; Index.
