Vowels and Consonants

Peter Ladefoged (1925-2006) was Research Phonetician and Professor of Phonetics Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was Director of the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory from 1962 to 1991 and was president of the Linguistic Society of America. He is the author of numerous books, including The Sounds of the World's Languages (with I. Maddieson, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996), Phonetic Data Analysis (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), and A Course in Phonetics, Sixth Edition (with Keith Johnson, 2010). Sandra Ferrari Disner teaches general and forensic linguistics at the University of Southern California. She has over 25 years of experience in speech technology, having developed commercial text-to-speech and speech-recognition systems in five languages, as well as the world's first talking video games.

“The book is of interest to teachers and would help to develop readers' perception of speech production and their competence in spoken English. It is a 'must have' book that adds richness and knowledge to individuals and libraries.”  (Linguist, 31 October 2012)

• Table of Web Content ix Author’s Preface from the First Edition xiiiPreface to the Third Edition xivAcknowledgments from the Previous Editions xviThe International Phonetic Alphabet xviii1 Sounds and Languages 11.1 Languages Come and Go 11.2 The Evolving Sounds of Languages 41.3 Language and Speech 51.4 Describing Speech Sounds 61.5 Summary 92 Pitch and Loudness 112.1 Tones 112.2 English Intonation 142.3 The Vocal Folds 202.4 Loudness Differences 232.5 Summary 243 Vowel Contrasts 263.1 Sets of Vowels and Standard Forms of a Language 263.2 English Vowels 283.3 Summary 314 The Sounds of Vowels 324.1 Acoustic Structure of Vowels 324.2 The Acoustic Vowel Space 354.3 Spectrographic Displays 374.4 Summary 385 Charting Vowels 395.1 Formants One and Two 395.2 Accents of English 435.3 Formant Three 465.4 Summary 476 The Sounds of Consonants 486.1 Consonant Contrasts 486.2 Stop Consonants 486.3 Approximants 536.4 Nasals 546.5 Fricatives 556.6 Summary 607 Acoustic Components of Speech 627.1 The Principal Acoustic Components 627.2 Synthesizing Speech 647.3 Summary 678 Talking Computers 688.1 Words in Context 688.2 Our Implicit Knowledge 728.3 Synthesizing Sounds from a Phonetic Transcription 758.4 Applications 788.5 Summary 819 Listening Computers 829.1 Patterns of Sound 829.2 The Basis of Computer Speech Recognition 879.3 Special Context Speech Recognizers 899.4 Recognizing Running Speech 909.5 Different Accents and Different Voices 949.6 More for the Computationally Curious 969.7 Summary 9710 How We Listen to Speech 9910.1 Confusable Sounds 9910.2 Sound Prototypes 10310.3 Tackling the Problem 10710.4 Finding Words 10910.5 Social Interactions 11010.6 Summary 11210.7 Further Reading and Sources 11211 Making English Consonants 11411.1 Acoustics and Articulation 11411.2 The Vocal Organs 11511.3 Places and Manners of Articulation 11711.4 Describing Consonants 11911.5 Summary 12212 Making English Vowels 12312.1 Movements of the Tongue and Lips for Vowels 12312.2 Muscles Controlling the Tongue and Lips 12612.3 Traditional Descriptions of Vowels 12912.4 Summary 13413 Actions of the Larynx 13513.1 The Larynx 13513.2 Voiced and Voiceless Sounds 13713.3 Voicing and Aspiration 13813.4 Glottal Stops 14013.5 Breathy Voice 14113.6 Creaky Voice 14513.7 Further Differences in Vocal Fold Vibrations 14813.8 Ejectives 14913.9 Implosives 15113.10 Recording Data from the Larynx 15213.11 Summary 15514 Consonants Around the World 15614.1 Phonetic Fieldwork 15614.2 Well-Known Consonants 15814.3 More Places of Articulation 15914.4 More Manners of Articulation 16714.5 Clicks 17214.6 Summary 17515 Vowels Around the World 17615.1 Types of Vowels 17615.2 Lip Rounding 17815.3 Nasalized Vowels 18215.4 Voice Quality 18415.5 Summary 18516 Putting Vowels and Consonants Together 18616.1 The Speed of Speech 18616.2 Slips of the Tongue 18816.3 The Alphabet 18816.4 The International Phonetic Alphabet 19216.5 Contrasting Sounds 19316.6 Features that Matter within a Language 19516.7 Summary 199Glossary 200Further Reading 205Index 206