This book describes all the known ways in which the sounds of the world's languages differ. Encapsulating the work of two leading figures in the field, it will be a standard work of reference for researchers in phonetics, linguistics and speech science for many years to come. The scope of the book is truly global, with data drawn from nearly 400 languages, many of them investigated at first hand by the authors.
Phonetics is the scientific study of sounds used in language- how the sounds are produced, how they are transferred from the speaker to the hearer and how they are heard and perceived. The Sounds of Language provides an accessible, general introduction to phonetics with a special emphasis on English. Focusing on the phonetics of English, the first section allows students to get an overall view of the subject. Two standard accents of English are presented- RP (Received Pronunciation), the standard accent of England, and GA (General American), the standard accent throughout much of North America. The discussion is arranged so that students can read only the RP or GA portions, if desired. Sixteen additional accents of English spoken around the world are also covered to provide students with wider international coverage. The author then moves on to introduce acoustics phonetics in an accessible manner for those without a science background. The last section of the book provides a detailed discussion of all aspects of speech with extensive examples from languages around the world. Containing student-friendly features such as extensive exercises for practising the sounds covered in each chapter; a glossary of technical terms; instructions on how to write phonetic symbols; the latest International Phonetic Alphabet chart and a detailed list of English consonantal variants, The Sounds of Language provides an excellent introduction to phonetics to students of linguistics and speech pathology and students of English as a second language.
The Sounds of Language is an introductory guide to the linguistic study of speech sounds, which provides uniquely balanced coverage of both phonology and phonetics. Features exercises and problem sets, as well as supporting online resources at www.wiley.com/go/zsiga, including additional discussion questions and exercises, as well as links to further resources such as sound files, video files, and useful websites Creates opportunities for students to practice data analysis and hypothesis testing Integrates data on sociolinguistic variation, first language acquisition, and second language learning Explores diverse topics ranging from the practical, such as how to make good digital recordings, make a palatogram, solve a phoneme/allophone problem, or read a spectrogram; to the theoretical, including the role of markedness in linguistic theory, the necessity of abstraction, features and formal notation, issues in speech perception as distinct from hearing, and modelling sociolinguistic and other variations Organized specifically to fit the needs of undergraduate students of phonetics and phonology, and is structured in a way which enables instructors to use the text both for a single semester phonetics and phonology course or for a two-course sequence
This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics has been fully updated for its third edition, and now includes an accompanying website with sound files, and expanded coverage of topics such as speech technology. Describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages Written by the late Peter Ladefoged, one of the world's leading phoneticians, with updates by renowned forensic linguist, Sandra Ferrari Disner Includes numerous revisions to the discussion of speech technology and additional updates throughout the book Explores the acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual components of speech, demonstrates speech synthesis, and explains how speech recognition systems work Supported by an accompanying website at www.vowelsandconsonants3e.com featuring additional data and recordings of the sounds of a wide variety of languages, to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life
Did you know that in German, a pig doesn’t say oink, it says gruntz, and when you sneeze in Japanese it’s hakushon, not achoo? With vibrant comics and fun facts, Sounds All Around will teach you interesting and funny onomatopoeias from all over the world! Words that imitate sounds are known as onomatopoeia, and they are a wonderfully strange and interesting part of language. After all, we all hear the same sounds, but we interpret and write them differently in different languages. Sounds All Around is a fun and funny illustrated guide to how people say many of these sounds all around the globe. Inside you’ll learn what a cat sounds like in French, what a yawn sounds like in Norwegian, what a bell sounds like in Hindi, and much, much more!
As the colonial hegemony of empire fades around the world, the role of language in ethnic conflict has become increasingly topical, as have issues concerning the right of speakers to choose and use their preferred language(s). Such rights are often asserted and defended in response to their being violated. The importance of understanding these events and issues, and their relationship to individual, ethnic, and national identity, is central to research and debate in a range of fields outside of, as well as within, linguistics. This book provides a clearly written introduction for linguists and non-specialists alike, presenting basic facts about the role of language in the formation of identity and the preservation of culture. It articulates and explores categories of conflict and language rights abuses through detailed presentation of illustrative case studies, and distills from these key cross-linguistic and cross-cultural generalizations.
It is commonly agreed by linguists and anthropologists that the majority of languages spoken now around the globe will likely disappear within our lifetime. This text focuses on the question: what is lost when a language dies?
Patterns of Sounds describes the frequency and distributional patterns of the phonemic sounds in a large and representative sample of the world's languages. The results are based on UPSID (the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database), a computer file containing the phonemes of 317 languages selected on the basis of genetic diversity. The book contains nine chapters analysing the UPSID data, as well as fully labelled phoneme charts for each language and a comprehensive segment index. Questions of the frequency and co-occurrence of the particular segment types are discussed in detail and possible explanations for the patterns observed are evaluated. The book is thus both a report on the research into phoneme inventory structure that has been done using UPSID and a resource that provides the reader with the tools to extend that research.
