Vowels and Consonants
An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages
Published on 7. September 2000
Book
Mixed media product
216 pages
978-0-631-21411-3 (ISBN)
Description
This superb introduction to phonetics, with its accompanying CD, is perfect for anyone who wants to learn about the sounds of languages. Peter Ladefoged, one of the world's leading phoneticians, describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages. People trill their lips and click their tongues when talking in ways that are amazing to English speakers. Several of these unusual sounds are reproduced on the CD.The book opens with a brief introduction to the main forces working on the sounds of languages. Using basic terms, Ladefoged outlines the acoustic components of speech and demonstrates speech synthesis. Subsequent chapters on computers and speech describe text-to-speech systems, and show how speech recognition systems work. The last part of the book describes the sounds of a wide variety of languages, introducing them to readers largely by means of the CD that accompanies the book, and by reference to the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The contents of the CD are available on Peter Ladefoged's phonetics site, which includes an online version of the CD as well as other useful phonetics links.
This is an introductory book on phonetics that will enable readers to go on to read The Sounds of the World's Languages (Blackwell 1996) by Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson, and other more advanced books on phonetics and phonology. With its lucid prose and accompanying CD, it is also a book to be enjoyed in its own right.
This is an introductory book on phonetics that will enable readers to go on to read The Sounds of the World's Languages (Blackwell 1996) by Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson, and other more advanced books on phonetics and phonology. With its lucid prose and accompanying CD, it is also a book to be enjoyed in its own right.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
11 halftones, 79 figures, 44 tables
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 172 mm
Weight
575 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-631-21411-3 (9780631214113)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions
Peter Ladefoged
Vowels and Consonants
Book
11/2004
2nd Edition
Wiley-Blackwell
€99.20
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Content
Preface. Acknowledgements. Part I: Sounds and Languages: 1. The Sounds of Language Evolve. 2. Language and Speech. 3. Describing Speech Sounds. 4. Summary. Part II: Pitch and Loudness: 5. Tones. 6. English Intonation. 7. The Vocal Folds. 8. Loudness Differences. 9. Summary. Part III: Vowel Contrasts: 10. Sets of Vowels in a Language. 11. English Vowels. 12. Summary. Part IV: The Sounds of Vowels: 13. Acoustic Structure of Vowels. 14. The Acoustic Vowel Space. 15. Sound Spectrograms. 16. Summary. Part V: Charting vowels: 17. Formants one and two. 18. Comparing English Vowels. 19. Formant three. 20. Summary. Part VI: The Sounds of Consonants: 21. Consonant Contrasts. 22. Stop Consonants. 23. Approximants. 24. Nasals. 25. Fricatives. 26. Summary. Part VII: Acoustic Components of Speech: 27. The Principal Acoustic Components. 28. Synthesizing Speech. 29. Summary. Part VIII: Talking Computers: 30. How Writing must be Pronounced. 31. Words and Sounds in Sentences. 32. Synthesizing Sounds from a Phonetic Transcription. 33. Summary. Part IX: Listening Computers: 34. Identifying Sounds. 35. The Basis of Computer Speech Recognition. 36. Special Context Speech Recognizers. 37. Recognizing Running Speech. 38. Different Accents and Different Voices. 39. More for the computationally curious. 40. Summary. Part X: Making English Consonants: 41. Acoustics and Articulations. 42. The Vocal Organs. 43. Places and Manners of Articulation. 44. Describing Consonants. 45. Summary. Part XI: Making English Vowels: 46. Movements of the Tongue and Lip for Vowels. 47. Muscles controlling the Tongue and Lip. 48. Traditional Descriptions of Vowels. 49. Summary. Part XII: Actions of the Larynx: 50. Voiced and Voiceless Sounds. 51. Voicing and Aspiration. 52. Glottal Stops. 53. Breathy Voice. 54. Creaky Voice. 55. Further Differences in Vocal Fold Vibrations. 56. Ejectives. 57. Implosives. 58. Recording Data on Larynx Actions. 59. Summary. Part XIII: Consonants Around the World: 60. Phonetic Fieldwork. 61. Well Known Consonants. 62. More Places of Articulation. 63. More Manners of Articulation. 64. Clicks. 65. Summary. Part XIV: Vowels around the World: 66. Types of Vowels. 67. Lip Rounding. 68. Nasalized Vowels. 69. Voice Quality. 70. Summary. Part XV: Putting Vowels and Consonants Together: 71. The Speed of Speech. 72. The Alphabet. 73. Slips of the Tongue and the Ear. 74. The International Phonetic Alphabet. 75. Contrasting Sounds. 76. Features that Matter within a Language. 77. Summary.