John Laver – författare

This book is directed at students studying the economic and social development of Russia and the Soviet Union, as well as the nature of Russian government and its impact on the Russian people in this period at AS/A-level. It forms part of the new Heinemann Advanced History series which has been written specifically to cover modules set by each of the three Awarding Bodies (OCR, Edexcel and AQA).

The importance of an individual's voice in everyday social interaction can scarcely be overestimated. It is an essential element in the listener's analysis of the speaker's physical, psychological and social characteristics. Differences in voice quality reflect different habitual adjustments, or settings, of the vocal apparatus. Individual consonant and vowel segments can be thought of as momentary actions superimposed on these settings and voice quality, as the characteristic sound of a speaker's voice, thus pervades and to a certain extent determines the phonetic character of these linguistic segments. This volume sets out a phonetic description of voice quality, which has largely been neglected in other studies. Dr Laver's integrative approach is a major advance in general phonetic theory and his standardisation of descriptive terminology for the voice will be welcomed by those working in the fields of speech therapy, speech pathology, social psychology and communications engineering, as well as by students and specialists in speech science, phonetics and phonology.

Underlying the apparent diversity shown by thousands of mutually incomprehensible languages of the world, there is a remarkable, elegant and principled unity in the way that these languages exploit the phonetic resources of speech. It is these principles that Professor Laver sets out to describe in this major new textbook. Assuming no previous knowledge of the subject, it is designed for readers who wish to pursue the study of phonetics from an initial to an advanced stage, equipping them with the necessary foundations for independent research. The book moves from a discussion of general concepts to a total of eleven chapters on phonetic classification, and it includes discussion of other issues such as the relationship between phonetics and phonology. There are illustrations from over 500 of the world's languages. Principles of Phonetics will be required reading for all serious students of speech and language.

Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences provides an authoritative account of the key topics in both theoretical and applied areas of speech communication, written by an international team of leading scholars and practitioners.  Combines new and influential research, along with articulate overviews of the key topics in theoretical and applied areas of speech communicationAccessibly structured into five major sections covering: experimental phonetics; biological perspectives; modelling speech production and perception; linguistic phonetics; and speech technologyIncludes nine entirely new chapters on topics such as phonetic notation and sociophonetics, speech technology, biological perspectives, and prosodyA streamlined and re-oriented structure brings all contributions up-to-date with the latest research, whilst maintaining the features that made the first edition so useful