30.119, Review: Spanish; Phonetics; Phonology: Clegg, Fails (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-119. Wed Jan 09 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.119, Review: Spanish; Phonetics; Phonology: Clegg, Fails (2017)

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Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2019 14:38:21
From: Nate Maddux [nate.maddux at gmail.com]
Subject: Manual de fonética y fonología españolas

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-4263.html

AUTHOR: J. Halvor  Clegg
AUTHOR: Willis C. Fails
TITLE: Manual de fonética y fonología españolas
SERIES TITLE: Routledge Introductions to Spanish Language and Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Nate Maddux, University of Wisconsin - Rock County

SUMMARY

This twenty-one-chapter manual, the latest to hit an already saturated market
of Spanish phonology handbooks, offers a neat 500 pages divided into six major
sections. It is a visually rich tome, with no fewer than 499 figures and
tables. Clegg and Fails bring to the project their combined seven decades of
teaching experience in Spanish linguistics at Brigham Young University, and
the book is apparently a polished version of a previously unpublished manual
they have been using in their department in recent years. 

The authors state their goal explicitly: the improvement of Spanish
second-language (L2) pronunciation in anglophone students facilitated by a
deepened understanding of the potential influence or transfer effects of their
English L1 phonology. Such a statement sets this manual apart from the more
theoretical resources; yet this new offering is not exclusively an applied
one, either. The text assumes no background knowledge in linguistics or
Spanish phonetics or phonology, and it holds central the notion that learner
pronunciation and comprehension come from a robust comprehension of the target
language sound system, rather than from production practice and imitation
alone. 

The order of chapters reflect the generally accepted progression of knowledge
within the discipline, building on sound production and perception before
addressing subconscious representations of these sounds, and the interplay of
Spanish vocalic and consonant segments with one another and with
suprasegmental aspects of language. Each chapter is buttressed by a
well-developed set of review questions, a list of key terms, several audio
exercises available on a companion website, and a supplemental bibliography
(in lieu of an appendix of works cited). The publisher also offers online
supplements like model syllabi and sample exams.  
 
 The first section in the manual contains four chapters and takes the reader
through human communication, the field of linguistics, the subfields of
phonetics and phonology, and human writing systems. Chapter 1 begins at the
beginning: human communication, social contexts in which it occurs, verbal and
non-verbal modalities, and the role of encoding and decoding within these.
This brief chapter situates verbal communication as a uniquely human endeavor
and lays the groundwork for the rest of the manual. 

 Chapter 2, the requisite “Saussure & Chomsky” hat tip, lays out the field of
linguistics and its subfields. It dedicates five pages to characteristics of
Spanish syntax (sentence diagrams and all) and just as many to the
morphological principles of the language.   
Chapter 3 presents a broad-strokes primer in phonetics and phonology:
segments, the phases of sound production, syllabification, and the
phonological concepts of contrast, minimal pairs, allophonic distribution, and
phonotactics. 

 Chapter 4 dedicates eighteen pages to human writing systems and the role of
sound in the historic development of symbolic, and later syllabic, consonant,
and phonemic orthographic systems for expressing language. 

 The second major section begins with articulatory phonetics, winds its way
through the physiology of speech and, in departing from many Spanish phonetics
texts currently available, offers in-depth chapters on the transmission and
reception of sound. Chapter 5 explores articulatory phonetics. This is where
the visual richness and thoroughness of Clegg and Fails’ manual becomes
apparent. This chapter includes thirty figures and illustrations, and the
chapter-final list of key terms enumerates over 75 items.  

 Chapter 6 offers two dozen pages on acoustic phonetics, and it is here that
this manual again distinguishes itself as innovative, thorough, and well
organized, this time with a primer on sound waves, instrumental analysis using
spectrogram tools, and analytical approaches to waveforms and formants.   

 Chapter 7 briefly acquaints the student with auditory phonetics. This
reviewer learned enough about the inner ear to pass as an amateur
otolaryngologist. Auricular anatomy is followed by an explanation of the
process of sound perception and how we humans identify and categorize the
sounds we hear. 

The manual’s third major section encompasses three chapters on Spanish
phonology. Here the chapter-final exercises include transcription exercises.
Chapter 8 illustrates relationships between phonemes, focusing on opposition
and contrast based on place and manner of articulation, and it introduces the
concept of minimal pairs to demonstrate this. Here the idea of neutralization
is also included, and the chapter offers brief explanations of ‘seseo’ and
‘yeímo’ as diachronic examples of the phenomenon. The chapter finishes with an
inventory and relative frequency profile of all Spanish phonemes. The chapter
touches on phonetic notation by offering a chart of symbols for 32 consonant
phonemes, imposing interdental and dental diacritics with no accompanying
explanation, and favoring non-IPA symbols for the palatal affricate phonemes. 

Chapter 9 touches on allophonic distribution and the formal expression of
phonological rules, and from here the authors lay out seven rules of Spanish
phonology that exemplify complementary distribution. The chapter offers two
additional rules that illustrate free variation in Spanish (rhotics, in both
cases). 

Chapter 10 is dedicated to phonotactics, taking the reader through syllable
structure, phonotactic restrictions affecting Spanish consonants, permissible
phoneme sequences, and restrictions in the language. 

Section four offers two chapters dedicated solely to vowels and the vocalic
inventory of Spanish. In this section and beyond, small but useful “Pistas
pedagógicas” and “Consejos prácticos” sections begin to appear, intercalated
within the text when dealing with specific sounds. Chapter 11 explores the
phonological features and phonetic characteristics of Spanish vowels, and the
processes of devoicing and nasalization. The chapter dedicates twelve of its
forty pages to comparing the vocalic systems of Spanish and English.
Instructors desiring a deeper look at phonological theory may observe the
absence of any treatment of distinctive features in this or the following six
chapters, à la Guitart (2004).

Chapter 12 inventories possible vowel sequences, focusing on the concepts of
fusion at word boundaries, diphthongs and triphthongs, syneresis and
synalepha, and hiatus. 

Spanish consonants are the focus of fifth and penultimate section of the
manual, which is divided into five chapters dealing with Spanish consonants
organized as follows: stops, fricatives and affricates, nasals, laterals and
rhotics, and consonant sequences. The section details each class of sounds
with accompanying formal rules, waveform and sonogram images, and sagittal
drawings of the buccal cavity noting the position of articulators
corresponding to the production each consonant. For safe measure, photographs
of the human mouth during sound production are also included in several of the
chapters. 

Chapter 13 examines Spanish stops and their allophonic variants and features a
dozen well-organized tables illustrating the relationship between orthographic
and phonetic representations of these sounds, as well as the phonotactic
contexts in which they may occur. It is here that the text begins to address
regional variation, dedicating several half-page sections to varying
realizations of /d, b, g/ in the Hispanophone world. 

In Chapter 14 the authors turn to Spanish fricatives and affricates, briefly
mentioning ‘seseo’ (and, later in the chapter, ‘distinción’) and ‘yeísmo’
before focusing on general allophonic characteristics and phonotactic
considerations of the segments in each group. Here the reader encounters
helpful cross-section illustrations of articulators in action, and the dozen
spectogram visualizations of words containing the allophonic variants of
interest. 

The relatively brief Chapter 15 addresses Spanish nasal phonemes and
allophones, with robust table illustrating the rules of distribution of the
language’s seven allophones of the nasal archphoneme. 

Lateral and vibrant consonants are the central theme of Chapter 16, and again
the manual’s wealth of images and its comprehensiveness of the manual are
striking, or exhausting, depending on one’s perspective. Axial plane
illustrations of the coronal and alveolar areas of the mouth assist the reader
in differentiating the English [l] from its Spanish counterpart. Also
noteworthy is the chapter’s flicker of an attempt to teach anglophone student
how to produce the Spanish multiple vibrant [r] by enlisting the analogy of a
piece of paper flapping in the wind.

Chapter 17 delves into sequences of consonants. It begins by explaining the
collapse of identical segments, with the exception of laterals and nasals, and
how this differs from the resultant gemination of these latter two classes.
The chapter also explores tautosyllabic syllable onsets and codas, and
heterosyllabic sequences occurring within words. 

 The sixth and final section concludes the manual with four chapters on
suprasegmental phonology in Spanish. Chapter 18 looks at syllable structure
and begins with a brief section attempting to define it along both
structuralist and generativist lines. Blink and you will miss the Chomsky &
Halle reference tucked in for good measure. The bulk of the chapter addresses
syllable anatomy and typology, with a useful section comparing canonical
syllable structure in Spanish and English. The chapter boasts an eight-page
bootcamp aimed at teaching resyllabification to non-native speakers. 

 Chapter 19 deals with syllable stress, and it opens with brief theoretical
considerations before presenting a comparison of Spanish and English stress
patterns to illustrate how pitch, duration, and intensity can indicate lexical
stress. After a few pages on positions of stressed syllables in Spanish, and
four pages sorting the language’s parts of speech according to (a)tonicity,
the chapter concludes with a highly-anticipated explanation of the rules of
orthographic accent use.  

  Chapter 20 handles the topics of segmental and syllabic duration, Spanish
and English rhythm, and syllable-, word- and sentence-level emphasis in brief
but adequate fashion. 

 Chapter 21 is dedicated to intonation patterns. The first fifteen pages aim
to establish the theoretical groundwork of intonation and its various written
representations. The latter half of the chapter provides a detailed schema of
intonation patterns in Spanish declarative, imperative and interrogative
utterances, with brief mention of regional variation. 

EVALUATION

Clegg and Fail’s book contributes perhaps the most complete resource on
Spanish phonetics and phonology in the target language to date. In an already
saturated market of similar offerings, there is an inevitable curiosity about
the book’s value proposition, and its worth is apparent in the text’s visual
richness, innovative approach to presenting information graphically, and
exhaustive treatment of what some may consider ancillary topics like the
history of human writing systems or the rules of the orthographic accent in
Spanish. Chapters 12 and 17, on vowel and consonant sequences, respectively,
present a refreshingly well-developed treatment of a subject that is typically
offered a handful of pages in other texts. Also unique is the book’s reliance
on spectrogram images in its categorization of sounds, complemented by a
twenty-page subsection on the interpretation of waveforms and formants in
Chapter 6 (“La fonetica acústica”).   
 
 Upon revisiting the goals of Clegg and Fails laid out in the book’s
introductory pages, this reviewer retains a healthy skepticism as to whether
the design of the book is truly in the service of the goal of nearer-native
pronunciation on the part of the anglophone student. Transfer effects per se
are not explicitly addressed anywhere in the manual, and the comparisons
between English and Spanish are no more abundant or elucidated here than in
Hualde (2005), for example. Hualde enthusiasts will also note the absence of
any treatment of Spanish morpho-phonological alternations, to which the the
earlier text dedicated a full chapter.   

The manual omits considerations of regional variation almost entirely. Here
again, proponents of texts like Hualde’s, or of Hammond (2001), may lament
this limited approach taken in Manual de fonética y fonología españolas. In
comparison, Schwegler et al. (2010) offer three entire, final chapters on
regional variation. It strikes this reviewer that even a rudimentary
understanding of synchronic variation in Spanish would be in the service of
improved pronunciation in the language by non-native speakers. 

  Devotees of Schwegler et al.’s (2010) Fonética y fonología españolas, 4/e
will note the absence of a glossary in this manual. The book attempts to
compensate with a set of chapter-final lists of undefined key terms, often
entailing several dozen concepts. The manual also reclaims some turf as a true
course text with its chapter-final review questions, sets of pronunciation
exercises (with digital supplement), phonetic transcription exercises in
Chapters 8 and 9, and a well-developed list of suggested further reading in
several of the early chapters. A bibliography is absent at the end of the
manual, but the chapters that include citations offer a works cited list on
the final page of the chapter. 

The sheer breadth of topics surveyed in Manual de fonética y fonología
españolas ensures that its use as a text for a semester course will require of
the instructor a healthy selectiveness. This behemoth will be no easier to
cram into fifteen weeks than Guitart’s Sonido y sentido (2004), but across a
year-long sequence, or simply as a supplement and a reference, Clegg and
Fails’ work shines. It presents a well-organized, visually rich, and
exhaustive addition to the Spanish phonetics and phonology bibliography, and
its contribution is noteworthy.  

REFERENCES

Guitart, Jorge. 2004. Sonido y sentido: Teoría y práctica de la pronunciación
del español. Georgetown: Georgetown University Press. 

Hammond, Robert. 2001. The Sounds of Spanish: Analysis and Application.
Somerville, MA: Cascadilla. 

Hualde, José. 2005. The Sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. 

Schwegler, Armin, Juergen Kempff, and Ana Ameal-Guerra. 2010. Fonética y
fonología españolas, 4/e. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Nate Maddux is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of
Wisconsin-Whitewater. His research interests include language contact,
phonetic and phonological approaches to Heritage Spanish in the U.S., and
Kichwa-Spanish contact in the Ecuadorian Andes.





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