10.989, Review: Davenport and Hannahs: Phonetics & Phonology

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-10-989. Fri Jun 25 1999. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 10.989, Review: Davenport and Hannahs: Phonetics & Phonology

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Date:  Thu, 17 Jun 1999 10:53:39 +0800
From:  "DETERDING David Henry (SOA)" <dhdeter at nie.edu.sg>
Subject:  Review of Davenport & Hannahs: Introducing Phonetics and Phonolog y

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Thu, 17 Jun 1999 10:53:39 +0800
From:  "DETERDING David Henry (SOA)" <dhdeter at nie.edu.sg>
Subject:  Review of Davenport & Hannahs: Introducing Phonetics and Phonolog y

Mike Davenport and S.J.Hannahs.  Introducing Phonetics and Phonology. Arnold
(UK), Oxford University Press (USA). 1998.  196pp.

Reviewed by David Deterding

Synopsis

This book begins with a fairly traditional overview of phonetics, with one
chapter each on articulation, consonants and vowels.  Next there is a
chapter on acoustic phonetics.  Finally, the bulk of the book (pages 73 to
187) is devoted to phonology, covering a wide range of different approaches,
including: phonemes and allophones, feature-based derivational phonology,
and autosegmental phonology. The aim of the chapters on phonology is to
present an overview of the major approaches to the field rather than pursue
a single theoretical framework in depth, and the book always tries to
outline weaknesses in different approaches and suggest criteria for
selecting between them.

Critical Evaluation

As this book is intended partly as a general introduction to phonetics, the
simple list of topics given above reveals a rather startling omission: there
is nothing, not even one mention, of intonation!  Surely intonation is
sufficiently important to merit a few pages, even if these were only to
acknowledge the existence of the topic and explain why it is not covered in
greater depth.

The book might therefore be regarded as an introduction to segmental
phonetics and phonology.  Some of the discussion of phonology does make
reference to suprasegmental topics such as syllable structure and metrical
feet, but this is done to provide an explanation of segmental phenomena,
such as the possibility of using an alveolar nasal in the first syllable of
'incline' while only a velar nasal is possible in the first syllable of
'inclination' (p.150).

As an introduction to segmental phonetics, there is (to my mind) one rather
serious flaw.  The first, absolutely fundamental lesson in phonetics is
surely to distinguish orthography from transcription, but this book does not
achieve this very well.  For example, we find a reference to the 'c' sound
in 'cat' (p.5), which is rather unfortunate in a phonetics book. Indeed the
bracketing convention for transcription is not introduced till page 18, and
then only for consonants, so even after that, we continue to find a rather
confusing mixture of orthography and transcription, such as 'sa[b m]an' (as
a result of assimilation) (p.26) and '[lj]ute' and 'pi[l]ow' (p.32).

As consonants are presented before vowels, use of phonetic vowel symbols is
mostly avoided in the discussion of consonants; but even this is not
achieved consistently, as quite a few vowel symbols manage to slip in before
they have been introduced, for example when discussing the distribution of
word final linking 'r' (p.33) and the occurrence of [j] (p.34).  Moreover,
there is mention of [o] as a 'high mid back vowel' (p.32) and discussion of
'high vowels' and 'low vowels' (p.35) in the chapter on consonants, before
the concepts of vowel height and backness are introduced (p.39) in the
following chapter.

In the chapter on vowels, there is an extraordinary amount of detail
describing regional variation.  Although the base accent for exemplification
is RP, we are typically given information about pronunciation of vowels in a
wide range of places, so for example reference is made to the pronunciation
of mid back vowels in London, North England, Minnesota, Glasgow, Northern
Ireland, Geordie, East Anglia, the East Midlands and the South West of
England (p.48-49).  While dedicated students with a finely-tuned sensitivity
to accent variation might find this fascinating, it seems likely that others
would find it somewhat tedious, and those who are not familiar with the
geography of Britain and have never met a Geordie are likely to be left
totally bewildered.

The chapter on acoustic phonetics is a fairly clear introduction, though the
discussion of formant transitions is a bit confusing.  For example, we are
told (p.68) that "an alveolar consonant causes the F2 of the following vowel
to rise (compared with the vowel alone without a preceding alveolar)", but
this does not tally with the diagrams on the following page which show that
F2 after [d] rises with a following [i] but falls with a following [u].
Perhaps the concept of a 'locus' would have been helpful, but this term is
not explained or used within the text even though it appears three times in
Table 5.2 (p.70).

In the chapters on phonology, there is a real danger when so many approaches
are presented that the material will get totally confusing.  Surprisingly,
this never happens, and chapters 6 to 11 of this book are a model of clarity
and a delight to read.  The reason for this is that there are just a few
well-selected examples explained carefully and methodically, so that even
when completely different analyses are presented side-by-side, they appear
to complement each other and deepen our understanding of the issues rather
than conflict.  The clarity of the presentation in these chapters on
phonology is really impressive.

Indeed, the tone of the second half of this book is very different from that
of the first few chapters on phonetics.  Unfortunately, it is not just the
tone that differs, as some of the material is inconsistent between the two
parts.  For example, the vowel in 'go' is presented as [@U] (I am using @
here to represent a schwa) on pages 49, 51, and 52, but as [oU] on pages 79,
99, 147 and 155, even though RP is supposedly adopted as the base model
throughout.  And in Exercise 1 on page 173, there are no less than 9
instances where the vowel symbol differs from the system suggested for RP on
page 52.

In fact, the vowel in 'go' causes an even more severe problem in chapter 6
on Features.  In the tables, it is shown as [o:] and is analysed as [+tense]
(p.89), and this serves to distinguish it from Cardinal Vowel 6 (the
backward 'c') which is shown as [-tense].  In the text on page 86 and again
on page 88, the vowel in 'horse' is shown with a length marker [:], but in
the tables on the same pages, this long vowel is not listed, and instead CV6
without [:] is shown.  Unfortunately, this is not just a simple typo -- if
the vowel in 'horse' is a long vowel and thus [+tense], the analysis
provides no way to differentiate it from [o:], and this means that the
feature analysis breaks down as it fails to differentiate all the vowels
listed.

Despite the existence of a few other such problems (such as 'supralaryngeal'
appearing twice in Fig 9.1 on p.136 -- presumably the second instance is an
error for 'place'), the meticulous presentation in the second half make it a
real candidate to serve as a highly accessible and delightfully clear
introductory textbook on phonological theory.

[About the reviewer: David Deterding is an Assoc. Prof. at NIE/NTU,
Singapore, where he teaches phonetics, syntax, and translation. He has
published on the intonation of Singapore English (JIPA, 24:2, 61-72) and the
formants of British English (JIPA, 27, 47-55), and he is the co-author with
G. Poedjosoedarmo of The Sounds of English: Phonetics and Phonology for
English Teachers in Southeast Asia, Singapore: Prentice Hall, 1998.  His
webpage is: http://www.soa.ntu.edu.sg:8080/ell/DavidD/Personal/david.htm]


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