Vowels and Consonants:Introduction to the Sounds of Languages 2/e,An(書+CD)

This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics is now available in a fully updated second edition. Peter Ladefoged describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages.

Important topics covered in Vowels and Consonants include:



The main forces operating on the sounds of languages

The acoustic components of speech and speech synthesis

Computers and Text-To-Speech systems and speech recognition systems

Descriptions of the sounds of a wide variety of languages that are reproduced on the accompanying CD.


This revised edition includes a new chapter on how we listen to speech and the greatly expanded CD now contains data on 100 languages to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life.

Peter Ladefoged, UCLA Research Phonetician and Professor of Phonetics Emeritus, was Director of the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory from 1962 to 1991. He is author of numerous books, including A Course in Phonetics (fourth edition, 2001) and Phonetic Data Analysis (Blackwell, 2004).

"Only Peter Ladefoged, the world's leading phonetician, could produce a work like this: an authoritative and thorough introduction to phonetics written in a style that can be understood by a reader with no prior background in linguistics"
John Ohala, University of California, Berkeley

"[This book] lucidly discusses issues that are not commonly covered in introductions to phonetics, including computerized speech synthesis and recognition, which ties in with a major focus on acoustics from the first chapter onwards." Times Higher Education Supplement


"This is a fascinating, accessible, and reader-friendly book by a master phonetician, about how speech sounds are made, and how they can be analyzed. Being able to hear the sounds under discussion, on the accompanying CD, is really useful. I warmly recommend the book to everyone with an interest, professional or otherwise, in spoken language." John Laver, Queen Margaret University College

Preface.
Acknowledgements.
Part I: Sounds and Languages:.
1. The Sounds of Language Evolve.
2. Language and Speech.
3. Describing Speech Sounds.
4. Summary.
Part II: Pitch and Loudness:.
5. Tones.
6. English Intonation.
7. The Vocal Folds.
8. Loudness Differences.
9. Summary.
Part III: Vowel Contrasts:.
10. Sets of Vowels in a Language.
11. English Vowels.
12. Summary.
Part IV: The Sounds of Vowels:.
13. Acoustic Structure of Vowels.
14. The Acoustic Vowel Space.
15. Sound Spectrograms.
16. Summary.
Part V: Charting Vowels:.
17. Formants one and two.
18. Comparing English Vowels.
19. Formant three.
20. Summary.
Part VI: The Sounds of Consonants:.
21. Consonant Contrasts.
22. Stop Consonants.
23. Approximants.
24. Nasals.
25. Fricatives.
26. Summary.
Part VII: Acoustic Components of Speech:.
27. The Principal Acoustic Components.
28. Synthesizing Speech.
29. Summary.
Part VIII: Talking Computers:.
30. How Writing must be Pronounced.
31. Words and Sounds in Sentences.
32. Synthesizing Sounds from a Phonetic Transcription.
33. Summary.
Part IX: Listening Computers:.
34. Identifying Sounds.
35. The Basis of Computer Speech Recognition.
36. Special Context Speech Recognizers.
37. Recognizing Running Speech.
38. Different Accents and Different Voices.
39. More for the computationally curious.
40. Summary.
Part X: Making English Consonants:.
41. Acoustics and Articulations.
42. The Vocal Organs.
43. Places and Manners of Articulation.
44. Describing Consonants.
45. Summary.
Part XI: Making English Vowels:.
46. Movements of the Tongue and Lip for Vowels.
47. Muscles controlling the Tongue and Lip.
48. Traditional Descriptions of Vowels.
49. Summary.
Part XII: Actions of the Larynx:.
50. Voiced and Voiceless Sounds.
51. Voicing and Aspiration.
52. Glottal Stops.
53. Breathy Voice.
54. Creaky Voice.
55. Further Differences in Vocal Fold Vibrations.
56. Ejectives.
57. Implosives.
58. Recording Data on Larynx Actions.
59. Summary.
Part XIII: Consonants Around the World:.
60. Phonetic Fieldwork.
61. Well Known Consonants.
62. More Places of Articulation.
63. More Manners of Articulation.
64. Clicks.
65. Summary.
Part XIV: Vowels around the World:.
66. Types of Vowels.
67. Lip Rounding.
68. Nasalized Vowels.
69. Voice Quality.
70. Summary.
Part XV: Putting Vowels and Consonants Together:.
71. The Speed of Speech.
72. The Alphabet.
73. Slips of the Tongue and the Ear.
74. The International Phonetic Alphabet.
75. Contrasting Sounds.
76. Features that Matter within a Language.
77. Summary.