This book consists of sixteen chapters by various scholars on a range of topics in phonetics. As mentioned in the introduction (p. 1), it is intended as a book for those who have a ‘good basic knowledge of phonetics’ but want to know some more about specific areas, and all of the chapters are packed full of up-to-date material about various aspects of phonetic research, most them written by established authorities in the fields.
Chapter 1 is divided into two parts. In the first part, Barry Heselwood traces the origins of phonetics from the ancient Egyptians and Indians up to the nineteenth century, while in the second part Zeki Majeed Hassan & Mark Jones describe the modern period since the establishment of the IPA at the end of the nineteenth century. In Chapter 2, Rachael-Anne Knight & Sarah Hawkins offer on overview of various issues in speech perception research, including the selection of speakers, the stimuli used, and the methodologies adopted. In Chapter 3, Marija Tabain introduces techniques for research into speech production, especially electropalatography (EPG), electromagnetic articulography (EMA) and ultrasound, discussing the pros and cons of each one. In Chapter 4, Andrew Butcher reviews issues that arise in conducting fieldwork, not just the need for a ‘ruggedized’ laptop, plenty of batteries, and charcoal powder for doing static palatography, but also how to deal with the cultural issues when obtaining data from indigenous tribes. In Chapter 5, Dominic Watt provides a summary of acoustic techniques that can be used in the analysis of vowels, consonants, and pitch. In Chapter 6, Valerie Hazan discusses research into the development of speech perception especially for infants before the age of one. In Chapter 7, John Esling deals with voice and phonation, describing a range of phonation types including modal voice, falsetto, creak, breathy voice, whispery voice and harsh voice. In Chapter 8, Lluisa Astruc offers a summary of prosody, including how variations in pitch, intensity and duration contribute to stress, rhythm and intonation. Chapter 9 is by Mark Jones, and it considers phonetic universals, including the extent to which factors such as gender, race, and the altitude at which a community lives might explain phonetic variation. In Chapter 10, Adrian Simpson discusses spontaneous speech, particularly the nature and causes of fast speech processes such as consonant and vowel reduction. In Chapter 11, Tom Starr-Marshall, Susanna Martin & Rachael-Anne Knight provide an overview of clinical phonetics, focusing on the diagnosis, categorization and treatment of speech difficulties among children. In Chapter 12, Peter French & Louisa Stevens summarize the current status of forensic speech science, especially auditory, acoustic and automatic methods of speaker comparison. In Chapter 13, Patricia Ashby & Michael Ashby discuss phonetic pedagogy, both the teaching of phonetics as a discipline and the application of phonetics for speech therapists and language teachers. In Chapter 14, Mark Huckvale introduces various acoustic transformations used in automatic speech recognition, speaker recognition, and text-to-speech synthesis. Chapter 15, by Rachel Smith, reviews new directions in speech perception, particularly the ways that variability affects phonetic content and also current models of neural modeling of speech. Finally, in Chapter 16, Jonathan Harrington, Phil Hoole & Marianne Pouplier provide an overview of new directions in speech production, especially concerning coarticulation, assimilation, and how the articulation of consonant clusters can be modeled.
One curious feature of this book is that the IPA chart is never presented. Although one might assume that those who have a good basic knowledge of phonetics should be thoroughly familiar with the chart, many people probably cannot remember every single symbol and would benefit from being able to consult the chart once in a while. For example, on page 17 it is noted that there is a symbol for a labiodental nasal but none for labiodental plosives, and a glance at the chart might have been welcome at this point. Furthermore, on the same page, it is reported that a symbol for a voiced labiodental flap was introduced in 2005, and it is a pity that this symbol is not actually shown. Then on page 111, there is discussion of the inclusion of ejectives and implosives on the chart, and again it would have helped if we could have seen how they are dealt with.
Nevertheless, the absence of the IPA chart is consistent with the tone of a book that is intended for those with a substantial background in phonetics. In places, this background is perhaps a bit more than the ‘good basic knowledge’ mentioned in the introduction. For example, on page 192, in connection with forensic speech analysis, it is stated that judgements about breathy voice can be checked ‘by showing decreased harmonics to noise ratio, increased formant bandwidth generally and/or strengthening of the spectrum at the lower frequencies and in the area of the third formant’, which would be somewhat opaque to anyone without substantial knowledge of acoustic phonetics; and while Chapter 5 offers a compact and authoritative survey of research methods in acoustics, it would probably not make much sense to anyone without a reasonable background in this area.
In many ways, one of the most valuable contributions of some of the chapters might be the references that can allow readers to investigate the various issues in greater detail. It is therefore a bit unfortunate that all the references are collated at the back of the book rather than with the individual chapters. While this undoubtedly saves space, as it avoids repeating items that are cited more than once, at the same time it restricts the extent to which the individual chapters can be distributed and used independently. Presumably, this is in the interest of the publishers, whose main aim is to sell books; but it does to a certain extent undermine the value of the individual contributions. In reality, given its price, few students or researchers are likely to buy the volume, so it is a pity if some of the chapters cannot gain a substantial circulation independent of the whole book. Of course, this is an issue that all publishers face in the modern world; but they need to find a way to licence access to or purchase of individual chapters online, and collating all the references at the end is not helpful in this respect.
Much of the material is densely packed as is fitting for a compact overview of the field, but some of it would have benefited from a bit of elaboration. For example: on page 40, in discussing contact palatography, mention is made of the ‘velar loop’ that is involved when velar consonants are produced, and some elaboration about this velar loop would have helped; on page 54, the discussion of ultrasound includes mention of a localized reverberation artifact known as a ‘comet tail’, and an image showing this kind of comet tail would have been welcome; on page 142, it is suggested that the segmental phonology of Hebrew offers evidence for the existence of phones, and I would have appreciated some illustration about how the phonology of Hebrew is relevant in this respect; on page 152, it is stated that segmentation of the speech stream is made harder because of the phonotactics of CV structures, and this needs further explanation, as I would have thought that the occurrence of simple CV syllables should enhance rather than hinder the ease of segmentation; and on page 214, it is suggested that in some circumstances a single segment can be realized as a sequence of phones, and this would have benefited from an illustrative example.
In fact, many of the chapters almost entirely eschew illustrative examples. For instance, while Chapter 12 provides an admirable, authoritative and up-to-date overview of the techniques and issues involved in forensic speech analysis, it is a pity that no reference is made to any actual cases in a field that would seem to be ideally suited to mention of case studies. In fact, the two chapters I enjoyed the most are Chapter 4 on phonetic fieldwork, which has lots of colourful stories about actual field research as well as splendid advice such as ensuring your vehicle has space for a couple of dead kangaroos as well as a large assortment of live human beings who might need help in collecting firewood (p. 61), and Chapter 10 on spontaneous speech, where the detailed coverage of coarticulation is illustrated with exceptionally valuable spectrograms showing such things as how the final consonant of image can be pronounced as a devoiced fricative (p. 159) and how the German word aber ‘but’ can be realized as a triphthong with little hint of the medial /b/ (p. 160). I wish more of the chapters had included such valuable illustrative examples.
Even though the material is carefully presented and most of it is written by acknowledged experts in the fields, there are a few errors. On page 129, it is suggested that one study had found ‘substantial shortening of the target vowel in monosyllables compared to disyllables’, and surely it must be the other way round – the vowel in cap would be expected to be longer, not shorter, than the vowel in the first syllable of captain; on page 130, it is suggested that on the logarithmic semitone scale, the pitch gap between 100 Hz and 150 Hz is equivalent to that between 170 Hz and 270 Hz, which is not correct, as 100 to 150 is an increase of 50%, so it would be equivalent to 170 to 255 Hz on a logarithmic scale; and on page 133, it is suggested that vowel centralization is usually measured as the difference between the first and second formant, which might be true for front vowels but is certainly not correct for back vowels. These three errors all occur in Chapter 8, which appears to be a little flawed in places. Finally, on page 251, it is suggested that the [ʃ#j] sequence in miss you may actually get pronounced as [mɪʃju], so presumably it should be the [s#j] sequence that gets changed. Perhaps this last one can be regarded as a simple typo.
Despite a few such flaws, a number of cases where further elaboration would have been welcome, and the absence of illustrative examples in many of the chapters, the book represents a valuable collation of authoritative, up-to-date summaries in various areas of phonetics, and many readers who want to know more about these fields will indeed find it of considerable value, though it is a pity that the opportunity for individual chapters to constitute a useful resource independent of the rest of the book is a little undermined by collating all the references at the end.
