The Oxford handbook of Laboratory Phonology is an in-depth survey of the state of the art of laboratory phonology, which is an approach for exploring phonological issues that incorporates empirical and theoretical methodologies from many fields and sub-fields. The handbook documents the history of laboratory phonology and its current trends and methodologies, and lays the groundwork for its future trajectory. The handbook is divided into five parts. Part I (Chapters 1–3) answers the questions ‘What is laboratory phonology, and how did it arise?’ Part II (Chapters 4–7) deals with variation, both categorical and continuous, which is an issue that unites phonologists, phoneticians, and sociolinguists. Part III (Chapters 8–13) deals with phonological and lexical representations, and the organization and acquisition of phonological systems. Part IV (Chapters 14–16) offers examples of how combining methodologies gains us greater insight into the language faculty. Finally, Part V (Chapters 17–22) delves into the details of how laboratory phonology is done, with examples of applied methodologies and resources.

Part I includes an introduction by the editors and reprints of two much earlier pieces: a shortened version of the 1990 introduction to Papers in Laboratory Phonology 1 (Beckman & Kingston Reference Beckman, Kingston, Kingston and Beckman1990) and the chapter on laboratory phonology from a book published in 2000 on Phonological knowledge: Conceptual and empirical issues (Pierrehumbert, Beckman & Ladd Reference Pierrehumbert, Beckman, Ladd, Burton-Roberts, Carr and Docherty2000), both of which explain the motivation behind establishing the Laboratory Phonology conference series, in 1987, and, more recently, the Association for Laboratory Phonology (2010) and the journal, Laboratory Phonology (Mouton de Gruyter, 2010). The introduction defines laboratory phonology as ‘an intellectual space’ rather than a sub-field of linguistics separate from phonology/phonetics (p. 4), reviews the history of the conference series, and associated volumes, and outlines the directions in which laboratory phonology is going. This chapter ties together themes in the two older pieces in Chapters 2 and 3, and those in Cohn (Reference Cohn2010) and Pierrehumbert & Clopper (Reference Pierrehumbert and Clopper2010), to make a roadmap to the following four parts.

Part II examines sources and kinds of variation, including sociolinguistic, phonetic, phonological, and suprasegmental variation. By turns, it details both the difficulty and necessity of incorporating variation into phonological frameworks and models, providing examples that illustrate why these many kinds of variation are important to consider in phonology, and how some researchers in the laboratory phonology community have approached the variation problem.

Part III explores the nature of phonological representations by questioning assumptions about the existence and the role of the lexicon, and examining the nature of abstract representations – whether these include features, gestures, syllables, fine-grained phonetic detail, and extra-linguistic detail. It also examines how phonological systems are shaped, by theory, in acquisition, over the course of the lifetime and during language change.

Part IV explores insights into phonology gained by incorporation of methodologies in perception, production, and acquisition. This section contains considerable overlap with the topics in the preceding section, but each chapter does provide unique perspectives on these topics. The overlap occurs because Part III primarily examines representations, while Part IV attempts to focus more on processes, and it is not at all clear where, if at all, to draw the line between representations (what is stored, and how it is stored, in the lexicon) and processes (how the lexicon is accessed).

Part V describes tools, resources, and methodologies for empirical research in laboratory phonology, outlining some of the practicalities and theoretical considerations of applying experimental techniques and data analysis methods. The section examines how to obtain, create, and use corpora, databases, and stimuli, as well as specific methods for collecting and analyzing acoustic, articulatory, behavioral, and neurocognitive data.

From my perspective, there is one technical aspect of the internal organization of the handbook that invites comment – while all chapters contain contributions by multiple authors, in some chapters this is manifested as a single cohesive, multi-authored paper, but others are composed of multiple singly-authored contributions, each with a distinct theme and perspective. This organization creates very many small selections, which would generally lend themselves well to choosing specific chapters for review, when one only wants to look at one or a few selections relevant to one's current topic of inquiry. However, all of the references are compiled into a single list at the end of the volume, rather than being given at the end of each chapter. This arrangement makes sense, in that many works are cited in multiple chapters, but makes it more difficult to include the reference list of individual chapters in scans or photocopies for classroom use, because one must include the bibliography of the entire handbook. Nevertheless, given the breadth of topics covered, the editors have succeeded in arranging the chapters into a surprisingly cohesive narrative, which facilitates chapter-by-chapter reading. The authors they have selected are recognized in their fields and have made valuable contributions to laboratory phonology. I would recommend this handbook not only for those researchers who are thinking about incorporating laboratory phonology methods into their own research, but I believe that even seasoned laboratory phonologists can learn much from reading about the state of the art of the discipline.