Phonetics For Dummies

Front Cover
John Wiley & Sons, Sep 5, 2013 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 384 pages
The clear and easy way to get a handle on the science of speech

The science of how people produce and perceive speech, phonetics has an array of real-world applications, from helping engineers create an authentic sounding Irish or Canadian accent for a GPS voice, to assisting forensics investigators identifying the person whose voice was caught on tape, to helping a film actor make the transition to the stage. Phonetics is a required course among students of speech pathology and linguistics, and it's a popular elective among students of telecommunications and forensics. The first popular guide to this fascinating discipline, Phonetics For Dummies is an excellent overview of the field for students enrolled in introductory phonetics courses and an ideal introduction for anyone with an interest in the field.

Bonus instructional videos, video quizzes, and other content available online for download on the dummies.com product page for this book.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
Getting Started with Phonetics Chapter 1 Understanding the ABCs of Phonetics
9
The Lowdown on the Science of Speech Sounds
15
Meeting the IPA Your New Secret Code
37
9
41
Touching on tone languages
43
Why the IPA Trumps Spelling
50
Producing Speech The HowTo
51
Reading a Sound Spectrogram
191
Formant frequency transitions
205
15
209
Speech in a noisy environment
214
Confirming That You Just Said What I Thought You Said
219
Understanding sound discrimination Examining characteristics of categorical perception
230
Exploring Different Speech Sources
237
Putting Your Larynx in a State
245

7
65
Classifying Speech Sounds
73
Tackling Phonemes
84
Speculating about English Speech Sounds
91
Speculating about English Speech Sounds
94
Exploring Coarticulation
104
Sounding Out English Vowels
107
Getting Narrow with Phonology
123
Putting the Rules Together
129
Getting Narrow with Phonology Chapter 9 Perusing the Phonological Rules of English
131
Glottal Stopping before Nasals
138
Grasping the Melody of Language
145
Marking Melody in Your Transcription
157
Continuation Rises and Tag Questions
164
Having a Blast Sound Waveforms
171
Having a Blast Sound Waveforms
172
Phase
178
Formalizing formants
184
Visiting Other Places Other Manners
253
Working with Your Tongue
266
Coming from the Mouths of Babes
277
A child with a cochlear implant CI
288
Accentuating Accents
291
Dude wheres my ride? The South Fixin to take yalls car
295
Working with Broken Speech
315
24
327
Ten Common Mistakes That Beginning Phoneticians
335
Debunking Ten Myths about Various English Accents
341
Yankees Are FastTalkin and Southerners Are Slow Paced
342
Index
347
26
348
252
352
76
353
204
354
69
361

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About the author (2013)

William F. Katz, PhD, is Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he teaches and directs research in linguistics, speech science, and language disorders. He has pioneered new treatments for speech loss after stroke, and he studies an unusual disorder known as "foreign accent syndrome."

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