A Course in Phonetics

Citation

Ladefoged, P., & Johnson, K. (2015). A Course in Phonetics (7th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Chapter Summary

The seventh edition (released early 2014, about 350 pages) continues the late Peter Ladefoged's textbook with Keith Johnson as co-author. It has eleven chapters in three parts, followed by a glossary, further reading and an index. Most chapters end with written exercises and performance exercises for practising sounds aloud. A companion website, keyed to the chapters, holds over 4,000 recordings of English and nearly 100 other languages, each with an instant spectrogram, along with interactive exercises and maps. The publisher's list of changes includes a revised treatment of phonology and its relation to phonetics, expanded sections on acoustic phonetics and speech motor control, MRI images of vocal tracts, and spectrogram reading introduced from Chapter 1.

Part I, Introductory Concepts: Chapter 1: Articulation and Acoustics

Speech production and sound waves, then places of articulation, the oro-nasal process and manners of articulation (stop, fricative, approximant, lateral), additional consonantal gestures, consonant waveforms, the articulation and sound of vowels, and suprasegmentals. Articulation and acoustics are introduced together from the start.

Chapter 2: Phonology and Phonetic Transcription

How to transcribe consonants and vowels, consonant and vowel charts, and an introduction to phonology, the section revised in this edition.

Part II, English Phonetics: Chapter 3: The Consonants of English

Stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals and approximants of English, overlapping gestures, rules for English consonant allophones, and diacritics.

Chapter 4: English Vowels

Transcription and phonetic dictionaries, vowel quality and the auditory vowel space, American and British vowels, diphthongs, rhotic vowels, unstressed syllables, tense and lax vowels, and rules for vowel allophones.

Chapter 5: English Words and Sentences

Words in connected speech, stress and its degrees, sentence rhythm, and intonation described with target tones.

Part III, General Phonetics: Chapter 6: Airstream Mechanisms and Phonation Types

Airstream mechanisms beyond the pulmonic, states of the glottis, voice onset time and a summary of glottal actions.

Chapter 7: Consonantal Gestures

Articulatory targets and consonant types across languages: stops, nasals, fricatives, trills, taps and flaps, laterals, with a summary of manners of articulation.

Chapter 8: Acoustic Phonetics

Source/filter theory, tube models and perturbation theory, acoustic analysis, the acoustics of consonants, interpreting spectrograms and individual differences between speakers. This chapter has written exercises only.

Chapter 9: Vowels and Vowel-like Articulations

Cardinal and secondary cardinal vowels, vowels in other accents of English and in other languages, advanced tongue root, rhotacization, nasalization, semivowels and secondary articulatory gestures.

Chapter 10: Syllables and Suprasegmental Features

Syllables, stress, length and timing, intonation and tone, and the distinction between stress, tone and pitch-accent languages.

Chapter 11: Linguistic Phonetics

A closing chapter on phonetics in the community and the individual, the International Phonetic Alphabet, feature hierarchy, a problem with linguistic explanations, the control of articulatory movements, memory for speech and the balance between phonetic forces.

Key Concepts

Part I (Chapters 1–2)

• Place and manner of articulation: where and how the vocal tract is constricted to make a consonant.
• Waveform and spectrogram: visual records of the sound of speech, used from the first chapter.
• IPA transcription: writing speech sounds with the International Phonetic Alphabet.
• Phonology: the patterning of sounds in a language, introduced alongside transcription.

Part II (Chapters 3–5)

• Allophone rules: statements of how English consonants and vowels vary with context.
• Auditory vowel space: arranging vowels by how they sound, comparing American and British English.
• Stress, rhythm and target tones: the description of English words and intonation.

Part III (Chapters 6–11)

• Airstream mechanism and phonation type: how air is set in motion and what the glottis does with it.
• Voice onset time: the timing of voicing relative to a stop's release.
• Source/filter theory: speech as a sound source shaped by the resonances of the vocal tract.
• Cardinal vowels: fixed reference points for describing vowel quality in any language.
• Tone and pitch accent: uses of pitch to distinguish words.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• From English to the world's languages. The three-part structure moves from basic concepts through the sounds of English to general phonetics, so students build transcription skills on familiar material before meeting airstream mechanisms, trills, advanced tongue root or tone languages.
• Practical skills. Performance exercises in nearly every chapter train students to hear and produce sounds, not only to describe them, and the publisher highlights practical IPA transcription as a central aim.
• Acoustics integrated early. Spectrograms appear from Chapter 1, Chapter 8 gives a full treatment of source/filter theory and spectrogram interpretation, and the companion website pairs every recording with a spectrogram.
• A large sound archive. The website's recordings of English varieties and nearly 100 languages, with maps of where they are spoken, let students hear the sounds the text describes.

Limitations

• Phonology is only introduced. Phonology occupies a section of Chapter 2 and the allophone rules of Part II; it is not a phonology textbook.
• Dependence on the website. Much of the practice and all of the sound examples are online, and Google Books warns that media referenced in the text may not be available in the ebook version; students need access to the companion site.
• English-centred middle. Part II is devoted to English, with American and British vowels compared; students interested mainly in other languages will spend three chapters on English before reaching general phonetics.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the standard first phonetics text on the phonetics and phonology list. Carley, Mees and Collins's Practical English Phonetics and Phonology is a workbook-style companion focused on English, with British and American English side by side, useful for extra transcription practice alongside Part II. Clark and colleagues' An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology covers similar ground with more phonological theory, and Odden's Introducing Phonology is the natural next book once Chapter 2's introduction to phonology has been read.

For acoustics, Ladefoged's Elements of Acoustic Phonetics and Johnson's Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics take Chapter 8 much further, the latter adding speech perception; read them after this book.

How to Use This Book

The book suits first courses in phonetics for linguistics students, speech and language therapy students, language teachers and self-learners; the publisher says no previous knowledge is required.

• Core: Chapters 1–5 in order; Chapters 2–4 establish the transcription skills used throughout.
• General phonetics: Chapters 6, 7, 9 and 10 for the sounds of other languages; Chapter 8 for acoustics, which can be read earlier for courses with a lab component.
• Optional: Chapter 11 for broader questions about phonetic explanation, suitable for students continuing in phonetics.

Do the performance exercises aloud, ideally with a partner or recorded and checked, and listen to the companion-site recordings for each chapter before transcribing. Practise reading the spectrograms that accompany the recordings, and keep a phonetic dictionary at hand when transcribing English.