16.3443, Review: Textbooks/Phonetics/Applied Ling: Price (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3443. Thu Dec 01 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3443, Review: Textbooks/Phonetics/Applied Ling: Price (2005)

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1)
Date: 28-Nov-2005
From: Emanuel da Silva < emanuel.dasilva at utoronto.ca >
Subject: An Introduction to French Pronunciation: Revised Edition 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 21:49:38
From: Emanuel da Silva < emanuel.dasilva at utoronto.ca >
Subject: An Introduction to French Pronunciation: Revised Edition 
 

AUTHOR: Price, Glanville 
TITLE: An Introduction to French Pronunciation 
SUBTITLE: Revised Edition 
SERIES: Blackwell Reference Grammars 
PUBLISHER: Blackwell Publishing
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1428.html 

Emanuel A. da Silva, Department of French, University of Toronto

SUMMARY

According to Glanville Price, his book 'An Introduction to French 
Pronunciation' is not for absolute beginners. ''It is a book for those 
who already have at least a basic knowledge of how French is 
pronounced but who need help and advice with a view to improving 
their pronunciation, to making it more authentic, to eliminating serious 
errors, and to reducing to an acceptable minimum features of their 
pronunciation that would betray them as non-native-speakers'' (p. 1). 
This book which has some textbook qualities is more of a pedagogic 
grammar aiming to help English speakers to know what to listen for in 
their spoken French, as well as in the French of others, in order to 
improve. It is a general yet systematic analysis of the phonetic 
structure of French in a contrastive framework (comparing English and 
French).

The book is 176 pages long and is divided into 20 chapters, a page of 
references and an index of all the French words discussed throughout 
the text. The 20 chapters can be grouped into at least four sections: 
the first section (Ch. 1-3) outlines the general principles of phonetics 
and the articulation of French. The second (Ch. 4-6) provides a brief 
overview of vowels, semi-consonants and consonants in French. The 
third section (Ch. 10-18) revisits in greater detail the particularities of 
French vowels, semi-consonants and consonants. Ch.10 examines all 
the vowels with the exception of mute 'e' which is the focus of Ch. 11. 
Ch. 12 deals with vowel length and provides the reader with 
five ''simple'' rules. In Ch. 13 the semi-consonants are revisited. The 
rest of the chapters in this section concentrate on the consonants: Ch. 
14 with Stops, Ch.15 with Fricatives and Ch. 16 with /r/, /l/ and Nasals. 
Consonantal germination and assimilation are briefly explored in 
chapters 17 and 18. The fourth section is the most difficult to group 
because throughout the book the author inserts other chapters that 
examine such important aspects of French pronunciation as the 
rhythmic group (Ch. 7), the syllable (Ch. 8), stress (Ch. 9), liaison (Ch. 
19) and intonation (Ch. 20).

EVALUATION

On the whole, this book is an excellent reference guide for improving 
French pronunciation. Despite being an 'introductory' work it covers in 
considerable detail the many particularities of French pronunciation, 
beyond the relation between vowels, consonants and the written 
word. By discussing other important topics such as the rhythmic 
group, syllabification, the many types of stress and liaisons, as well as 
the varying intonational patterns, Price outlines in an informed way 
precisely what the language learner should listen for (and eventually 
imitate) when hearing/speaking French. His book provides a solid 
base for those English speakers looking to improve their French 
(particularly first to third-year undergraduate students). All of the most 
important aspects of French pronunciation are identified and 
discussed (from the pitfalls for English speakers, to an entire chapter 
on the mute 'e', and from the particularities of the French liaison to 
some regional variations like Canadianisms). 

Another strength of this book is Price's writing style. Not overly 
technical or theoretical, the phonetic explanations are clear and easily 
understood with many examples to help guide the reader's 
understanding. The text is extremely well organized and cross-
referenced, with the table of contents clearly outlining each chapter, 
subsection and topic. The book can easily be read from cover to 
cover, or used as a reference for specific questions because each 
section is complete. Students will appreciate the detailed references, 
many of which even list the precise page numbers cited. The 18-page 
index at the end lists all the French words discussed throughout the 
book and serves as a quick and easy reference tool for specific 
questions.

Many of the weaknesses of this book are identified by the author 
himself (in Ch. 1 - General Considerations) because they stem from 
the very fact that the written form of introductory texts does not 
necessarily do justice to explaining the variation and complexity of oral 
pronunciation. To his credit, Price is aware of many of these and 
discusses them briefly; like his choice of Parisian French as the 
standard, not because it is the best variant but since ''it is the basis of 
French as taught in schools, colleges and universities all over the 
world it would be perverse not to adopt it here too'' (p. 4). Although I 
understand that the author has to make certain concessions, I am not 
convinced that today Parisian French is still the basis of French taught 
in schools worldwide (i.e. in Canada, Belgium, Algeria or Haiti to name 
but a few examples).

With regards to the rich variation within French and English, the 
author claims that ''where there seems good cause to do so, we shall 
draw attention to regional, social or stylistic differences in 
pronunciation'' (p. 4). Nevertheless, from my reading of the book, 
attention is almost entirely Euro-centric, that is to say British English 
and French from France. Again, due in part to the limitations of writing 
an easily accessible and non-exhaustive introductory text, and given 
the author's professional affiliation, this comes as no surprise. ''North 
American'' or simply ''American'' pronunciations are generalized as 
one, whereas among ''British'' pronunciations the author also 
highlights the English from: south-west England, parts of Lancashire, 
Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

Some of the particularities of Canadian French are presented (with 
regards to vowels - pp. 74-75, and consonants - p. 104) but they are 
generalized as being from Québec. Price writes, ''[t]here is, of course, 
considerable variation in pronunciation within the province of Quebec, 
both regionally and individually?'' (p. 74) and I would argue that this 
kind of phonetic variation is not limited solely to Québec but is present 
throughout all of francophone Canada.

Price also admits that no one book can give someone ''a good accent'' 
(p. 2), and that his book should be supplemented by hearing, listening 
and speaking to ''native-speakers'', or radio/TV broadcasts. When 
explaining the different intonational contours, the author points out 
that ''recordings can be particularly useful provided the learner knows 
what kinds of intonation pattern to listen for'' (p. 147). And so, since 
this book comes with no audio supplement, it aims to help learners 
identity what phonetic aspects to listen for. As a reference tool alone, 
this book is extremely useful, but as a pedagogic tool, I think it would 
be better served by an audio supplement (perhaps online if the 
author's intention is ''not to provide yet more listening material'' [p. 2]).

I was also disappointed by the lack of updated revisions in this new 
edition of the 1991 original. In fact, as Price points out in his 
preface, ''in its essentials it [this new edition] remains the same book 
and the pagination of the original edition has been retained''. Of the 
14 references given, only three differ from the original edition: two are 
revised editions of earlier books (Catford 2001 for 1988 and Gimson 
2001 for 1970) and there is only one new reference Ladefoged 
(2001). I expected some more recent references, since half of them 
are still from the 1970's or earlier. Furthermore, over the span of 
almost fifteen years some of the 'emerging' general phonetic trends 
highlighted in the 1991 edition may have become prominent and 
widespread by 2005, but the author does not revisit them.

Notwithstanding these weaknesses, this book is a useful tool for 
Anglophones looking to improve their spoken French. It covers a 
broad range of topics in a way that is very easy to read and for that 
reason I would recommend it to my undergraduate students.

REFERENCES:

Catford, J. C. (2001) A Practical Introduction to Phonetics, 2nd edn. 
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gimson, A. C. (2001) Gimson's Pronunciation of English, 6th edn, 
revised by Alan Cruttenden. London: Arnold.

Ladefoged, P. (2001) A Course in Phonetics, 4th edn. Fort Worth 
Texas, and London: Harcourt. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Emanuel da Silva is a Ph.D. candidate in sociolinguistic ethnography 
at the University of Toronto's department of French. His research 
interests include: critical interactional sociolinguistics, discourse 
analysis, transnationalism, immigration studies and more, in order to 
explore the role of language in the construction of identity among 
French-Canadians and Portuguese-Canadians in Toronto. He also 
teaches introductory French language courses at the undergraduate 
level.





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