John CLARK ; Colin YALLOP, Introduction to phonetics and phonolog

Carbonell, Joan F.

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132 Links & Letters 1, 1994 Reviews vies, A. and A. Howatt (eds.) Interhn- JOHN C m  and COLIN YALLOI! guage, 133-161. Edinburgh: Edin- I n m d d n  toPho&a~Phomb8 burgh University Press. 0xford:Basil  Blackwell, 1990. GUILFOYLE,  and M. NOONAN. (1988). Functional Categories and Language 400 pages. Acquisition. Paper presented at the Thirteenth Annuai Boston University Conference on Language Develop- Phonetics and phonology are van disci- rnent. plines which include rnany different to- HYAMS,N. (1986). LnnguageArquirition pies- Thereforel 'Orne degree of and the Theory parameters. Dar- cornplexity, associated with any scientific drecht: Reidel. field, is unavoidable when studying HYMs, N. (198». rtThe nieory of Pa- speech in general. Clark 81 Yallop's An rarneters and Syntactic Develo- introduction to phonetics and phonology prnent". Roeper, T and E. Williarns achieves the airn of giving an introduc- (eds.) Parametter Setting, 1-22. Dor- tory account of speech sciences, and suc- drecht: Reidel. ceeds in presenting a clear and concise OUHALLA, J. (1 99 1). Functional Catego- description of both areas of study. In rnany aspects, this is an irnpressive book. riesandfarametric VnMion. London: Its rnain merit lies in its putting together Routledge. POLLOCK, J. Y. (1989). "Verb Movernent, in one book a vast range of different issues covered in ~honet ic  and phonological UG and the Structure of IP". Lingui- theory. tic Inquiry 20. 365-424. The bookstarts with a short introduc- IUDFoRD> *. (1990). Syntactic T h e o ~  tory chapter one which presents and out- and the Acquisition ofEnglishSyntax lines the rnain topics dedt with in The ¡Vature ' f  Ear!J' Child Grammars text. Chapter 2 deals with the organs of 'fEngLish. Oxford: Basil B1ackwell. speech and various functions. It be- TSIMPLI, 1. (1992). Functional Categories gins with a very exhaustive descnption of and Maturahont The Prefinctional the anatorny of speech production, pay- Sta@ ofLa%uage Ac9uisition. Docto- ing attention to muscular ac- ral dissertation. Universi'7 College tion and the respiratory cycle. Much of London. the detail present in this chapter is remi- WEISSENBOm, J. (1990). "Functiond niscent of Borden and Harris (1984). Categories and Verb MOvernent in This part may be too cornprehensive for Early Ckrrnan: The acqusition of Ger- the beginner student of phonetics, but rnan syntax reconsidered". Rothwei- griVes an excellent overview to any-one lec, M .  (ed.) Spracherwerb with interests in speech anatorny. The Grarnrnatik. Linguistiche Untersuchu- whole chapter is centred on the gen m ~ m  l3werb van S ~ n t m  UndMor- tion of laryngeal excitation, particularly, phologie. Gottingen: Verlog. rnodai phonation, that is, normal vocal fold vibration. Chapters 3 and 4 are concerned with Montserrat Capdevila i Batet some basic issues within phonetic theory. Departarnent de Filologia Anglesa i Ger- These include phonation rnodes, vowel rnanística and consonant articulation, rnanner and Universitat Autbnorna de Barcelona place of articulation, voice onset time, secondary articulation and coarticula- tion, syllabification, etc. It also describes the diversity of speech sounds to be found in languages around the world. This is done less systematically than in other Reviews Links & Letters 1, 1994 133 books, of which Ladefoged (1971) is perhaps a salient one. Chapters 5 and 6 consider the basic tenets of phonological theory frorn two rather different theoretical view~oints. In chapter 5, topics covering phAological Drocesses, neutralization. ~honernic and ' I allophonic status, and patterning of sound systems are analyzed frorn a tradition al point of view. Chapter 6 is devoted to Generative Phonology. An account of both the origins and develooment of the theory is presented. ~ f t e r '  the publica- tion of Chomsky and Halle's The sound attern ofEnglish (SPE), in 1968, phono- fogical theory was convulsed by a totally new a proach to linguistics in general. Specilattention is given in this chapter to a number of theoretical issues that develo~ed frorn the ~ublication of SPE. In particular, there is a very clear explana- tion of rule notation and rule ordering. The chapter closes with a section on 'abs- tractness', the basic problem and limita- tion of classical generative phonology. The following chapter seven is dedi- cated to the acoustics of speech produc- tion. Again, we have a very detailed account of sound nature and sound pro- pagation. There are very enlightening sec- tions on the source-filter rnodel of s~eech  I production and spectrographic analysis. The chapter is weak, though, on various areas. narnelv acoustic cues and soeech perception. As for perception, the chapter only deals briefly with perception tests, and lacks a description of the anatomy and physics of hearing and speech decod- ing. Suprasegrnental phenornena are ana- lyzed in chapter 8. After a general intro- duction on the phonetic basis of prosody, the authors analyze pitch, tone and into- nation, the intonation of English, stress, and stress assignrnent, with ieference to the rule-based approach to stress place- ment proposed in SPE. Chapter 9 focuses on the decornposi- tion of speech units into their constituent features. Different feature systems includ- ing Jakobson's Uakobson, Fant & Halle, 1952)  and  Chomsky and  Halle's (Chomsky & Halle, 1968) are surnmar- ized and analvzed. The final chapter is cornpletely devo- ted to phonological theory. In the first part, there is a historical account of the progress of honological theory to our davs The Aerent theoretical frameworks that have appeared during the explosion of rnodels since the oublication of SPEare reviewed in the seCond part of Chapter 10. These include Dependency Phonolo- gy, Lexical Phonology, and Metrical Pho- These theoretical rnodels, rnost of whic "0~081 are cornmonly called non-linear, are responsible for the cornplexity origi- nated in present-day phonological theory. O n  the whole. An introduction to ~ h o -  netics andphonology stands as a pieLe of reference to anyone who is interested in or is currently working within the fields of phonetic sciences, phonology or lin- guistics in general. At the end of each U U chapter there are sorne exercises which are particularly of use to students. The book presupposes no previous knowledge of phonetics or phonology. Yet, it provides a verv corn~rehensive and thorou~h des- cription & the topics, rnany of wgich are described with remarkable detail. The reader will find here the necessary infor- mation to gain a thorough understanding of the subjects covered. BORDEN, G.J. and W S ,  K.S. (1984). Speech Science Primer. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. CHOMSKY, N. and HALLE, M. (1968). The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row. CLARK, J. and YALLOP, C. (1990). An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. 0xford:Basil Blackwell. DURAND, J. (1990). Generative and Non-linear Phonology. London:  Longman. JAKOBSON, R., FANT C.G.M. and HALLE M. ( 1 9 5 2). PreLiminaries to Speech Analysis: The Distinctive Features and 134 Links & Letters 1, 1994 Reviews Their Correlates. Cambridge, Ma.: ~lications are briefly sketched in MIT Press. 4-13. The three principles on whic RaB" t is LADEFOGED, P. (1971). Preliminaries to theory is built concern, (i) the impossibi- Linguistic Phonetics. Chicago: The lity of observing language independentl~ University of Chicago Press. of society, (ii) the impossibility of descri- MOORE, B.C.J. (1982). An Introduction bing language structures independently to the Psychology of Hearing. London: of society, and (iii) the necessity of ac- Academic Press. counting for language maintenance as a preliminary to any social approach to lin- joan E carbonell, guistic change. Milroy then turns to dis- University College London cuss some aspects of Weinreich, Labov and  Herzogs Empirical foundations (1968), which, despite their emphasis on fieldwork methods, constitute a still m d y  system-oriented approach. According JAMES MILROY. Linguistic Eriation to Milroy, it is this internal orientation and change: on the ~ j ~ ~ ~ r i ~ ~ l  that has made the actuation problem (i.e., the deterrnination of the causes oflinguis- Sociolinguistics of English. Oxford: tic change) an insoluble one, Blackwell, 1992. xii + 243 pages. Chapter 2, Social and historicallin- guistics (pp. 20-47), opens with a discus- This book consists of a brief Editor's pre- sion ofsome of he main system-oriented face by Peter Trudgill, a preface, and seven trends concerning the determination of chapters; by and large, the first chapter is the locus of language change. The author a theoretical statement about the need for points, that these tren& have systemati- a social model of language change, which cally neglected the role of speakers in the the author goes on to build in the sub- process of change. In a similar way, Labov sequent chapters. The theme throughout argues that the locus of change is in the is the integration of the theory of linguis- group, not in the individual. As Milroy tic change into a broader theory of social points out, linguistic change is locared in change. The author, former Professor of speaker-interaction and is negotiated be- Linguistics at the University of Sheffield tween speakers in &e course of interac- and Senior Lecturer in English at Queens tion, much as other aspects of discourse University, is now engaged in research and are negotiated between them (Milroy writing, and has done considerable work 1992: 36). on various hisrorical and dialectal aspects Chapters 3 and 4 (pp. 48-80 and 81- of English, mostly related to Belfast En- 122, respectively) deal with the analysis glish. and interpretation of linguistic patterns Chapter 1, Introduction: Language revealed by the community. Both chap- change and variation (pp. 1-19), begins ters are based on previous research carried with a discussion on de Saussure's state- out by James and Lesley Milroy in the ments about the uniformity of langua e Belfast area. The question of the embed- k which, according to Milroy, are not se f- ding of language variation in society is evidently true. The elimination of these approached from a variationist point of structuralist assumptions is thus a pre- view, following Weinreich, Labov and vious step towards the question of the Herzog's quantitative paradigm. As for study of language change. Contrary to the interpretative phase of the model, the most other approaches proposed in the most important concern of the author is last decades about the process followed by the relation of the variations previously linguistic change, James Milroy is concerned patterned to the social variables of age, with a strictly sociolinguistic theory of sex, class, and, most important of all, the language change, whose theoretical im- ethnographic concept of social network. 

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