16.964, Review: Applied Ling/Phonetics/Spanish: Guitart (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-964. Wed Mar 30 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.964, Review: Applied Ling/Phonetics/Spanish: Guitart (2004)

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1)
Date: 30-Mar-2005
From: John Stevens < stevensj at uncw.edu >
Subject: Sonido y sentido 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:31:30
From: John Stevens < stevensj at uncw.edu >
Subject: Sonido y sentido 
 

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AUTHOR:  Guitart, Jorge M.
TITLE:  Sonido y sentido
SUBTITLE:  Teoría y práctica de la pronunciación del español con 
audio CD
SERIES:  Georgetown Studies in Spanish Linguistics 
PUBLISHER:  Georgetown University Press
YEAR:  2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-3476.html


John J. Stevens, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, 
University of North Carolina Wilmington

DESCRIPTION

This volume is an introduction to Spanish phonetics and phonology.  It 
is written entirely in Spanish and is intended mainly for English-
speaking undergraduate students of Spanish in the United States.       

In the preface, Guitart states that this book will offer assistance to 
those whose goal is to learn to communicate orally in Spanish based 
on the following assumptions:  First, the more a second language (L2) 
learner approximates the pronunciation of the target language, the 
easier it will be to understand him or her.  Second, it is possible to 
improve L2 pronunciation by combining conscious knowledge of the 
language with practice such that this knowledge becomes 
unconscious and is therefore applied automatically.  Finally, an 
awareness of how Spanish sounds are organized within a system 
combined with a knowledge of the phonological processes to which 
they are subject will facilitate the pronunciation and comprehension of 
words and phrases in which these sounds appear (p. xix).   

The book contains 20 chapters and includes a glossary of terms, a 
select bibliography, and an index.  Chapter 1 presents some 
fundamental notions regarding human languages in general and the 
Spanish language in particular.  Chapters 2 through 4 introduce 
articulatory phonetics and describe the sounds of Spanish in 
traditional terms of voicing and manner and place of articulation.  
Chapters 5 through 8 offer an introduction to the  
theoretical/descriptive analysis of Spanish phonology from a 
generative perspective, which assumes that there are invariable, 
underlying psychological forms, variable surface forms and processes 
that relate the two levels.  Chapters 9 through 19 combine the 
description of Spanish sounds with practice exercises designed to 
improve pronunciation by reducing or eliminating the amount of 
English "accent" exhibited in L2 Spanish.  These practice exercises 
are supported by a companion CD, which contains the audio version 
of the exercises.  Each of the chapters in this part of the book also 
contains a section on the significant dialectal differences exhibited by 
the phenomena being examined in that particular chapter ("Variación 
lectal de interés"), as well as a section detailing important 
pronunciation differences between Spanish and English ("Diferencias 
principales con el inglés").  Finally, chapter 20 focuses on the most 
common errors found among English-speaking learners of L2 Spanish 
and offers advice on how to achieve a more native-like accent in 
Spanish.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

This is a very well written and organized book.  Guitart provides clear 
explanations of content generally considered difficult by 
undergraduate students, especially those with no previous 
background in phonetics or linguistics.  As an aid to comprehension, 
the author makes use of bold type script, summarizes key concepts 
that appear in the margins of the text, gives occasional English 
translations, and concludes each chapter with a summary section that 
synthesizes the chapter's content and reviews important technical 
vocabulary.  

Authors of Spanish phonetics and phonology textbooks have tended 
to employ different phonetic alphabets to represent the sounds of 
Spanish (e.g., Dalbor 1997; Hammond 2001; Teschner 1999).  Guitart 
solves this problem by wisely adopting the use of the International 
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) on the grounds that it is the most widely used 
phonetic alphabet in the world.  He offers ample opportunity to 
practice using the IPA in the transcription exercises provided 
throughout the book.
 
Perhaps the book's greatest advantage is its level of detail.  Guitart 
goes beyond a mere contrastive analysis of the differences between 
Spanish and English by providing a complete account of Spanish 
dialectal and stylistic variation.  Throughout the book, the author's 
descriptive analyses are supported by theoretical explanations that 
emphasize the relationship between the physical manifestation of 
speech sounds and the psychological aspects of speech production 
and perception.  

Paradoxically, the book's greatest strength--its level of detail and 
theoretical support--may not make it the best choice for nonspecialists 
merely interested in improving their Spanish pronunciation.  For 
example, the author states that [IPA-beta, IPA-eth, IPA-gamma] are 
continuant sounds that can be realized as either fricatives or 
approximants:  These sounds are considered obstruents when they 
are fricatives, but should be considered as sonorants when they are 
approximants (p. 31).  While this information may be important for a 
specialist, a student with no previous background may be intimidated 
and confused by the technical aspects of the description, especially 
because there are no special symbols designating the approximant 
pronunciation of these sounds.  Similarly, the author describes voiced 
fricative variants [IPA-beta, IPA-eth, IPA-gamma] for the phonemes /p t 
k/, respectively, which occur post-nuclearly in an allegretto 
(moderately fast) style (p. 100).  Again, while useful for the serious 
student specializing in Spanish phonetics, this additional information 
regarding the occurrence of the voiced fricatives may prove 
disconcerting to those students already struggling to sort out the 
allophonic distribution of the plosive/fricative alternation of the voiced 
plosive phonemes /b d g/.

Although Guitart does an excellent job of detailing variation among 
different dialects of Spanish in the chapter sections entitled "Variación 
dialectal", he fails to include the voiceless uvular fricative /IPA-chi/ in 
the chapter dealing specifically with fricatives.  He does mention this 
sound in the beginning of the book as part of a short section on uvular 
sounds, where he states that in some sublects of the Spanish of 
Castile uvular fricative is pronounced instead of velar [x] (p. 37).  The 
pronunciation of the uvular fricative is actually quite common in Spain.  
According to Canfield, "the [x] of Spain (except the South) is usually 
uvular" (1981, p. 10).  If in the chapter devoted to fricatives Guitart 
describes the interdental /IPA-theta/ and the apico-alveolar /IPA-s-with-
apical-diacritic/ fricatives as characteristic features of the dialects of 
central and northern Spain, he should then also include a detailed 
description of uvular /IPA-chi/, which is a common and very salient 
feature of these dialects.     

The book's practice exercises are good.  Guitart offers opportunities 
throughout the book to practice phonetic transcription, and the "Para 
pensar" sections provided in each chapter force students to think 
critically about the topics discussed in that particular chapter.  
Although the author does furnish an answer key for the "Para pensar" 
exercises, the book would have benefitted as well from the inclusion of 
answers to the transcription exercises thereby enabling students to 
check their own work.

The quality of the sound of the companion CD is not the best due to a 
reverberation effect evident in the recorded practice exercises.  The 
CD program would have been strengthened by the inclusion of 
recorded samples of dialectal variation, as well as samples illustrating 
pronunciation differences between largo, andante, allegretto, and 
presto styles of speech.

The above criticisms are not meant to diminish in any way the overall 
excellence of this book and should be taken instead as suggestions 
that may possibly benefit a future edition.  All things considered, this 
work represents a valuable contribution to the field and will be 
especially useful for advanced students specializing in the field of 
Spanish phonetics and phonology and/or Hispanic linguistics.

REFERENCES

Canfield, D. Lincoln.  1981.  Spanish Pronunciation in the Americas.  
Chicago:  U of Chicago P.

Dalbor, John B.  1997.  Spanish Pronunciation:  Theory and Practice.  
3rd ed.  New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Hammond, Robert M.  2001.  The Sounds of Spanish:  Analysis and 
Application (with Special Reference to American English).  Somerville, 
MA:  Cascadilla Press.

Teschner, Richard.  1999.  Camino oral:  Fonética, fonología y 
práctica de los sonidos del español.  2nd. ed.  New York:  McGraw Hill. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

John J. Stevens received his Ph.D. in Hispanic linguistics from the 
University of Southern California.  He is currently an assistant 
professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, 
where he teaches courses in Spanish language and linguistics.  His 
research interests include applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and 
phonetics.  He has published articles on Spanish dialectal variation 
and the acquisition of Spanish as a second language.





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