16.2657, Review: Phonetics: Ladefoged (2005)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-2657. Wed Sep 14 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.2657, Review: Phonetics: Ladefoged (2005)

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1)
Date: 13-Sep-2005
From: Leah Paltiel-Gedalyovich < glh33 at zahav.net.il >
Subject: Vowels and Consonants 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 19:39:18
From: Leah Paltiel-Gedalyovich < glh33 at zahav.net.il >
Subject: Vowels and Consonants 
 

AUTHOR: Ladefoged, Peter
TITLE: Vowels and Consonants
SUBTITLE: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages (Second 
Edition)
PUBLISHER: Blackwell Publishing
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-1447.html 

Leah R. Paltiel-Gedalyovich, Department of Foreign Literatures and 
Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

SUMMARY

This book was written as an introductory textbook. Its aim is to 
familiarize students with no background in phonetics with the ways of 
characterizing the sounds of human languages. The book consists of 
sixteen chapters and is accompanied by a CD where examples 
referred to in the text can be heard. The 1996 version of the IPA chart 
is included before the first chapter. A glossary of useful terms used in 
the text follows Chapter 16. The CD also includes material relating to 
Ladefoged's (1993) "A Course in Phonetics". (I will not refer to this 
material in the review.)

Chapter 1 "Sounds and Languages" is an introductory chapter. A 
theoretical evolutionary orientation to the study of human sounds is 
briefly presented. A working definition of language as 'a system of 
sounds subject to various evolutionary forces' (p.1) is given and later 
the main purpose of language "to convey information" (p.5) is added. 
The work of phoneticians is introduced. The articulatory and cognitive 
constraints on human sounds are briefly reviewed. The three methods 
used to describe sounds which are discussed in the text are named: 
IPA symbols, acoustic characteristics and articulatory characteristics. 
In this chapter, early concepts in acoustics: pitch, loudness and quality 
are introduced.

Chapter 2 "Pitch and Loudness" discusses the first two acoustic 
characteristics in detail. First, tone is discussed. The phonemic use of 
tone variation is exemplified by Chinese and Cantonese (Note that the 
term 'phoneme' is not used.). The (syntactic/semantic/pragmatic) use 
of tone changes are exemplified by English. The examples can be 
heard on the CD and their spectrograms and pitch patterns can be 
seen. The waveforms shown in the Figures in the text are not 
repeated on the CD. Throughout the chapter the objective, scientific 
nature of acoustic measurement is noted, coupled with the variability, 
between and within speakers, of the sounds measured. The function 
of the vocal folds and the articulatory basis of pitch variation are 
described. A video of vocal fold vibration is included on the CD, as 
well as three color stills (shown in the text in black and white). There is 
no audio accompanying the vocal fold video or pictures. Loudness 
variation is explained and its minor role in meaning variation briefly 
discussed. Stress variation is attributed primarily to pitch variation. 

Chapter 3 "Vowel Contrasts" begins with the inadequacy of English 
orthography as a representation of English vowels. The phonemic 
versus phonetic description of vowels in emphasized, although 
again, 'phoneme' is not mentioned, but rather, 'categories of 
contrasting sounds' (p.26). The vowels represented by the same IPA 
symbol in several languages are brought and can be heard on the 
CD. The vowels of each language are given as a group; the vowels of 
the different languages represented by the same symbol are not 
presented consecutively. The rest of the chapter focuses on the 
different vowels of different dialects of English, particularly comparing 
American and British English.

Chapter 4 "The Sounds of Vowels" deals with the third acoustic 
characteristic - quality. The concept of overtones is introduced as 
distinguishing between vowels. Formants are introduced and 
explained. The CD audio is used to demonstrate how formant 
differences can be heard. Spectrograms are introduced. 

Chapter 5 "Charting Vowels" While still in the acoustic part of the text, 
this chapter begins with experience of the articulatory basis of 
differences between vowels. Formant charts are used to show the 
characterization of vowels based on two, and in some instances, 
three, formants. Differences between men's and women's vowel 
productions in different English dialects are charted. 

Chapter 6 "The Sounds of Consonants" Stop, approximant, nasal, 
fricative and affricate consonants are described in terms of their major 
articulation patterns and their acoustic characteristics as illustrated by 
spectrography.

Chapter 7 "Acoustic Components of Speech" serves as a summary of 
the nine acoustic components of speech sounds previously presented. 
The acoustic characteristics are given their auditory (perceptual) 
correlates. The analysis of speech into these components allows 
computerized synthesis of speech sounding close to human.

Chapter 8 "Talking Computers" The aim of computer synthesis of 
speech is given as a very close approximation of human speech, 
including coarticulatory effects (this term is not used), stress and 
intonation. Computer programs that convert orthography to speech 
must account for the lack of one to one correspondence between 
grapheme and phoneme in languages like English, and also take into 
account conventions like abbreviations. Different methods of building 
up a synthesis from a phonetic description are described (parametric 
and concatenative approaches). The results of examples of the 
different systems are demonstrated on the CD. Computerized speech 
synthesis is also seen as a potential model of human speech 
production.

Chapter 9 "Listening Computers" shows the other side of speech 
synthesis - computerized interpretation of speech. The failure to 
produce a successful computerized interpretation of speech sounds is 
seen as an inadequacy of our model of speech. The process is one of 
matching patterns to a large store. However, the basic difference 
between inexact people, and exact computers, makes it difficult to 
design a computer that will interpret acoustic descriptions in the same 
manner as phoneticians interpret spectrograms. Computers use 
probability to choose interpretations of sound sequences. 

Chapter 10 In "How We Listen to Speech", the idea is presented that 
the perceptual differences between sounds are not linear. There are 
boundaries between similar sounds at which we begin to perceive the 
sounds differently. These are exemplified for voicing on the CD. 
Unfortunately, I was unable to play example 10.2. Furthermore, 
speech is not analyzed and interpreted sequentially, rather chunks of 
speech sounds are interpreted together, automatically and temporal 
sequence of sounds is difficult to accurately determine. Tasks 
investigating this hypothesis are reported and demonstrated on the 
CD. 

Chapter 11 "Making English Consonants" begins the section on 
articulatory phonetics. Articulation is defined as controlled movements 
of the vocal organs for a specified purpose. The relative lack of 
precision in articulatory versus acoustic phonetics is noted. First, a 
description of the articulatory apparatus (vocal folds and superior) is 
given and illustrated diagrammatically. The traditional definitions of 
place and manner of articulation are given and diagrams of the 
articulatory postures for some English consonants are shown. Next 
the characterization of English consonants by place-manner-voicing is 
related to the IPA chart (or a partial version of this chart).

Chapter 12 "Making English Vowels" presents the characterization of 
vowels by tongue height as an approximate description. The 
differences in tongue height are related to the acoustic characteristics 
previously presented. This is more easily applied for the front vowels 
than for the back vowels. The anatomy and function of the tongue 
muscle are discussed in some detail with that of the lips also 
mentioned. The difficulty in accurately describing the positions of the 
articulators has resulted in phoneticians historically taking first formant 
frequency as tongue height, and second formant frequency as tongue 
backness/lip rounding.

Chapter 13 "Actions of the Larynx" takes us one step down 
anatomically to the structure and function of the larynx. The 
movements of the laryngeal cartilage are related to pitch changes, 
differences between vowels, voicing as well as voice qualities. 
Phonetic voicing differences between languages are discussed with 
the concept of Voice Onset Time. These are illustrated on the CD. 
Unfortunately, I was unable to play the Spanish examples. The larynx 
as an articulator is exemplified in the text and on the CD for glottal 
stops (Hawaiian), 'breathy stops' (Hindi), breathy-voiced vowels 
(Gujartati), 'creaky-voiced' vowels (Jalapa Mazatec), 'tense-voice' 
(Mpi), ejectives (Quechua), and implosives (Sindhi,Owerri-Igbo). A 
brief mention of methodology used in collecting information about 
sounds of unknown languages is given here.

Chapter 14 "Consonants Around the World" begins with an 
introduction about disappearing languages, explaining the importance 
of fieldwork with little spoken languages. It then surveys the 
consonants of a variety of languages, pointing out the consonants or 
consonant features most common among languages. The IPA chart is 
used as the reference first for places of articulation and then for 
manners of articulation. Examples of languages which have each 
sound are brought and can be heard on the CD. (I was unable to hear 
some of the Hungarian examples.) The discussion includes both the 
articulatory (teaching the reader how to make the sound) and acoustic 
descriptions of these sounds. Other methods of phonetic fieldwork 
(e.g. palatography) are exemplified. 

Chapter 15 "Vowels Around the World" is the vowel counterpart of the 
consonants described in Chapter 14. The number of vowels and the 
number of consonants in a language are not related. Languages of 
the world may have between three and twenty four vowels. Features 
of vowels discussed include: vowel height, lip rounding, backness, 
vowel length, nasalization and quality. Both articulatory patterns (how 
to make the sound) and the acoustic features (formant features) are 
presented. Examples from a variety of languages illustrating the 
different vowel characteristics can be heard on the CD.

Chapter 16 "Putting Vowels and Consonants Together" In this 
chapter, Ladefoged presents his theory of how speech and speech 
sounds are represented in the brain, expanding idea briefly presented 
previously in the book. The main idea is that people do not store or 
produce individual sounds but rather sound combinations such as 
syllables and words, despite the breakdown into individual sounds 
which has been discussed in the preceding fifteen chapters. Support 
for this theory is brought from slips of the tongue and from 
orthography as an invention (as opposed to a discovery of a natural 
phenomenon). The chapter goes on to discuss the IPA symbols and 
their use. From here the concepts of phoneme and phonological 
features are introduced. 

EVALUATION

This is a very readable book presenting complex concepts in a friendly 
way. The constant cross-references within the book and the 
coordination of the two major orientations - articulatory and acoustic - 
make for a unified text where concepts are continuously reinforced. 

The variety of languages presented and the use of the CD to allow 
auditory as well as visual (spectrographic, IPA symbol) examples 
serves to make the topics discussed both very clear and interesting. 
The CD is an excellent supplement to the written text. It includes 
examples of many languages as well as opportunities to experience 
experiments in phonetics. The exact references to the CD in the text 
make for easy incorporation of the CD examples into reading the text. 
Unfortunately, a small number of the examples could not be played on 
my copy of the CD. 

The detailed explanations of how to produce sounds of various 
languages, including rare languages, promoted a deeper 
understanding of these sounds. I found the anatomical explanations of 
the articulatory mechanism useful, although I would have been happy 
to see something on respiration as the source of the airstream for 
speech. The chapters on computerized speech further deepen the 
reader's understanding of speech sounds. 

There is very little on phonology, however, as this is a textbook of 
phonetics this is perhaps not a real criticism. 

I found the order of the presentation of the topics sometimes 
surprising. Articulatory phonetics is discussed only in the latter half of 
the book but already from the earliest chapters the reader is referred 
to "how sounds are produced". It is not clear to me why the first 
feature to be discussed is tone. 

As an introductory text, it is certainly written with clarity appropriate for 
students with no background in phonetics or any related field. 
Considering the framework of the introductory course I am about to 
begin teaching, I find this text at the level of the preliminary course 
which precedes my course. However, the book is perhaps too detailed 
for this preliminary course. On the other hand, the subjects covered 
are in almost sufficient detail for my introductory course but, the book 
is less structured than the type of text I would want to follow. (Less 
structured and practical than say, Ladefoged's (1993) 'A course in 
Phonetics'.) As a teaching aid for me and as a supplementary 
reference for my students, I expect to find both the text and the 
accompanying CD very useful. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Leah Gedalyovich is currently assisting in research into Hebrew G-SLI 
at the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben-Gurion 
University of the Negev. She combines research with part-time work 
as a speech-language pathologist in pre-school and school settings. 
She is about to commence teaching an introductory course in 
phonetics and phonology. Research interests include normative first 
language acquisition (primarily of Hebrew), language disorders, the 
interaction of semantics and pragmatics and the clinical application of 
linguistic theory.





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