Vowels and Consonants

by Peter Ladefoged (University of California, Los Angeles)

• ISBN13: 9780631214120
• ISBN10: 0631214127
• Edition: CD
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: Wiley

Summary

This superb introduction to phonetics, with an accompanying CD, is perfect for anyone who wants to learn about the sounds of language. Peter Ladefoged, one of the world's leading phoneticians, descibes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages.

Author Biography

Peter Ladefoged, UCLA Research Phonetician and Professor of Phonetics Emeritus, was Director of the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory from 1962 to 1991. He is author of Sounds of the World's Languages (with Ian Maddieson, Blackwell 1996), Elements of Acoustic Phonetics (second edition, 1996), and A Course in Phonetics (fourth edition, 2000).

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
List of Tables	xiii
The Compact Disk	xvi
Preface	xix
Acknowledgments	xx
The International Phonetic Alphabet	xxii
Sounds and Languages	1	(8)
The Sounds of Language Evolve	1	(2)
Language and Speech	3	(1)
Describing Speech Sounds	4	(4)
Summary	8	(1)
Pitch and Loudness	9	(16)
Tones	9	(3)
English Intonation	12	(6)
The Vocal Folds	18	(4)
Loudness Differences	22	(1)
Summary	23	(2)
Vowel Contrasts	25	(6)
Sets of Vowels in a Language	25	(1)
English Vowels	26	(4)
Summary	30	(1)
The Sounds of Vowels	31	(8)
Acoustic Structure of Vowels	31	(4)
The Acoustic Vowel Space	35	(1)
Sound Spectrograms	36	(2)
Summary	38	(1)
Charting Vowels	39	(8)
Formants One and Two	39	(4)
Comparing English Vowels	43	(3)
Formant Three	46	(1)
Summary	46	(1)
The Sounds of Consonants	47	(14)
Consonant Contrasts	47	(1)
Stop Consonants	47	(5)
Approximants	52	(1)
Nasals	53	(1)
Fricatives	54	(6)
Summary	60	(1)
Acoustic Components of Speech	61	(7)
The Principal Acoustic Components	61	(2)
Synthesizing Speech	63	(4)
Summary	67	(1)
Talking Computers	68	(10)
How Writing Must be Pronounced	68	(3)
Words and Sounds in Sentences	71	(2)
Synthesizing Sounds from a Phonetic Transcription	73	(4)
Summary	77	(1)
Listening Computers	78	(18)
Identifying Sounds	78	(5)
The Basis of Computer Speech Recognition	83	(2)
Special Context Speech Recognizers	85	(1)
Recognizing Running Speech	86	(4)
Different Accents and Different Voices	90	(1)
More for the Computationally Curious	91	(3)
Summary	94	(2)
Making English Consonants	96	(10)
Acoustics and Articulations	96	(1)
The Vocal Organs	97	(2)
Places and Manners of Articulation	99	(2)
Describing Consonants	101	(3)
Summary	104	(2)
Making English Vowels	106	(12)
Movements of the Tongue and Lips for Vowels	106	(4)
Muscles Controlling the Tongue and Lips	110	(3)
Traditional Descriptions of Vowels	113	(4)
Summary	117	(1)
Actions of the Larynx	118	(20)
Voiced and Voiceless Sounds	118	(1)
Voicing and Aspiration	119	(2)
Glottal Stops	121	(2)
Breathy Voice	123	(4)
Creaky Voice	127	(3)
Further Differences in Vocal Fold Vibrations	130	(1)
Ejectives	131	(2)
Implosives	133	(1)
Recording Data on Larynx Actions	133	(4)
Summary	137	(1)
Consonants Around the World	138	(20)
Phonetic Fieldwork	138	(2)
Well-Known Consonants	140	(1)
More Places of Articulation	141	(8)
More Manners of Articulation	149	(5)
Clicks	154	(3)
Summary	157	(1)
Vowels Around the World	158	(11)
Types of Vowels	158	(2)
Lip Rounding	160	(4)
Nasalized Vowels	164	(3)
Voice Quality	167	(1)
Summary	168	(1)
Putting Vowels and Consonants Together	169	(15)
The Speed of Speech	169	(2)
The Alphabet	171	(2)
Slips of the Tongue and the Ear	173	(3)
The International Phonetic Alphabet	176	(1)
Contrasting Sounds	177	(2)
Features that Matter within a Language	179	(4)
Summary	183	(1)
Glossary	184	(3)
Further Reading	187	(2)
Index	189