Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/35-954

Title: The Sounds of Language
Subtitle: An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, 2nd Edition
Series Title: Linguistics in the World
Publication Year: 2024

Publisher: Wiley
http://www.wiley.com
Book URL: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Sounds+of+Language%3A+An+Introduction+to+Phonetics+and+Phonology%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781119878483

Author(s): Elizabeth C. Zsiga

Reviewer: Andrea de los Angeles Canavosio

REVIEW

This book about the linguistic study of sounds is an excellent resource to introduce students of linguistics and new linguists into the field of phonetics and phonology. Not only does it include theoretical explanations which are beautifully contextualised, but it also includes practice activities in the book and on a website.

It consists of 24 chapters grouped into six different parts. At the end of each chapter, further readings to expand on the topics presented are suggested. Furthermore, several review exercises and further analysis and discussion tasks are proposed so as to returnto the main concepts developed and encourage the reader to keep reflecting upon them. Readers are also encouraged to go online to the book’s companion website to access additional resources relating to each chapter.

Part 1 contains five chapters and is devoted to articulatory phonetics. It includes a historical review of the origin and development of human language and the study of speech, phonetics and phonology. It also provides a detailed description of the parts of the vocal tract and the development of the tools and technological devices that have been used throughout the decades to study speech. It includes an explanation of the way articulators interact to produce sounds of languages from all around the world, which allows readers to explore and try to articulate sounds that they may have never produced. Phonetic transcription is introduced, together with consonant and vowel sounds that human beings are capable of producing, zooming into positional variation in English.

Part 2 contains four chapters and deals with acoustics and perception. Details are given in relation to how the sounds of language are produced, transmitted, perceived and measured. Concepts such as soundwaves, sound propagation, intensity, resonance and frequency are explained. The descriptions and expositions employ examples and comparisons with real life situations that help us to understand the physics of sounds and the different kinds of waves. For those who are interested, formulas to measure intensity and other features of soundwaves are provided. A thorough account of the process of how sounds come to be digitised and transformed into binary notation is also included.

Whereas the first two parts concentrate on the physical aspects of the production and perception of sounds, Part 3 moves beyond their physical characteristics to delve into the more abstract and systematic relationships there are among sounds. It is divided into 5 chapters revolving around segmental phonology, concentrating on how sounds combine in linear strings. Key concepts such as contrast and predictability are explained and analysed through concrete examples. Phonotactic constraints and alternations in different languages are described in order to understand how each language has its own restrictions, phonological patterns and phonological and morphological interactions. Phonology is later on analysed under the light of rule-based Generative Grammar; autosegmental representations, Constraint-based phonology and the Optimality Theory are touched upon as well.

Part 4, which contains three chapters, keeps focusing on phonology but moves on to suprasegmentals, i.e., higher-level organisational units. The sonority, structure, constraints and alternations that may occur in syllables because of environment, for instance, are delineated. The author goes on to explain linguistic stress, its different levels in English, and how stress determines certain allophonic patterns. Reference is made to the contrasts between languages that use lexical, paradigmatic or positional stress. The alternating nature of stress is outlined by introducing the notion of metrical foot. A more detailed description of stress in English is included, making reference to patterns for different word categories but also highlighting its complexity and unpredictability. The way in which pitch is used to convey a variety of meanings in both tonal and non-tonal languages is discussed in the last chapter of this part, together with its autosegmental representation.

Part 5 has two chapters and it is devoted to how phonology, i.e. sound structure, and morphology, i.e. word structure, interact in order to construct words which are pronounceable and interpretable. Through examples and minute descriptions we come to acknowledge how phonological restrictions and morphological distinctions work together. Discussions on how phonology conditions allomorphy are presented, followed by types of prosodic and process morphology. The last chapter in this part deals with lexical phonology, and a distinction is made depending on whether phonological alternations interact with morphology (lexical) or with phonetics (post-lexical). Classifications and examples are thoroughly explained. Theoretical approaches to lexical phonology are presented highlighting the perspective each of them proposes.

Lastly, Part 6 contains six chapters which deal with sound variation and change caused by different factors and also with acquisition and learning. First, diachronic variation is under focus. Changes that took place in the last millennium are described and exemplified using different versions of the Bible. The types of sound change and the possible causes and effects of these variations are discussed. A rather captivating section shows how researchers trace sounds across languages so as to historically reconstruct the origin of certain sounds. Correspondences between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic identified by linguists, such as the Brothers Grimm and later on developed into the Neogrammarian hypothesis, are presented in order to show how various languages and families of languages relate to one another. Limitations to the genetic model of language change are also acknowledged. Finally, the origins of Old English and later Middle English are described, exhibiting how different waves of settlers/invaders and their native languages circulated in what is now British territory. The changes that took place during the Modern English period, such as The Great Vowel Shift are illustrated. When analysing Contemporary English, examples of loans and borrowimgs from languages such as French and Latin are given.

EVALUATION

This is a highly enjoyable and recommendable book, not just for linguistics students or new graduates but also for experienced researchers and teachers. It allows readers to review phonological phenomena while being provided with historical and socio-cultural facts that were part of their origin and development.

All topics and subtopics are thoroughly contextualised, providing a historical perspective on the development of the concepts, instruments, techniques or technological devices described. This historical, social and even geopolitical contextualisation allows readers to critically interpret those elements and also reflect upon other possibilities and options that were left aside. For instance, the author raises awareness about the Eurocentric perspective of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which makes us imagine other configurations of the alphabet, had other actors been in charge of developing it and had different communities, interests and perspectives been taken into account.

Something I found both innovative and convenient is that there appear detailed descriptions of the various aspects of the articulation of all the sounds which human beings are capable of making. Readers have access to practical instructions and tips on how to produce different articulatory configurations of sounds from numerous languages; this allows readers to experiment and even play with their phonation system. Creative and helpful comparisons, images and speech technology are used to aid explanations about most of the issues touched upon.

Through the text it is interesting to see how the author also refers to social factors and changes that contribute to a more thorough understanding of phenomena analysed. All over the book we find “In Focus” sections which include curious and engaging facts related to the topic being discussed. This information is not necessarily strictly related to phonology or even linguistics at times, but contributes to providing enough data to fully understand the processes by which certain phenomena function or have particular characteristics nowadays. For example, when making reference to diachronic changes and differences between old English and Contemporary English, the author refers to how gender was portrayed, and the use of “gender-neutral” masculine constructions; this puts into perspective the great number of changes that have taken place throughout history, not just at the phonetic level, and reveals social processes that also materialised in between.

This book is highly recommendable for both graduate and undergraduate linguistics students and scholars interested in having a historical, contextualised and comprehensive view of human sounds around the globe. It is hard to find such detailed and thorough descriptions and explanations about so many phonetics and phonology topics which are crucial to understanding the importance and the complexity of this field of linguistics.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

My name is Andrea Canavosio. I work as an English Language and Phonetics and Phonology lecturer and researcher at the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. I have a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK, and an MA in English Applied Linguistics from the University of Córdoba. My research interests revolve around Spanish and English phonetics and phonology, sociophonetics, assessment of oral proficiency, and second language acquisition. I have also done research on second language writing and assessment.