Under each Couse Section of the website there is a list of recommended readings related to that section. These readings are recommended and you are not expected to read all of them.
REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS
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Morrison, Geoffrey Stewart (2006) LING 205 Lecture Notes. May 2006 prices: $11.53 at the U of A bookstore |
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Rogers, Henry (2000) The sounds of language: An introduction to phonetics. Harlow, Essex, UK: Pearson Education. May 2006 prices: $50.10 new or $37.60 used at the U of A bookstore, $39.91 new at Amazon.ca |
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There are several introduction to phonetics textbooks from which I could have chosen, from my perspective as a teacher each has certain advantages and certain disadvantages. I chose this one for a couple of reasons: – It is relatively cheep (hurray!). You will probably notice that the new price for Rogers is cheaper than the second-hand price for Ladefoged’s A Course in Phonetics which has been used for this course in the past. – It starts with the familiar and then moves on to the less familiar, e.g., (assuming the reader speaks English) it starts with English sounds and then moves on to non-English sounds. It also includes a description of Canadian English. The latter makes it a good book for you to read and hopefully understand by yourself, which is basically what I want you to do with the textbook. You will notice that the order the textbook covers topics and the order I cover topics in class is not the same (nor do we cover all the same topics), and this is deliberate. The idea behind this is that getting two different perspectives will make it easier for you to understand and learn the subject matter. Some students might get more out of the way I present material, some might get more out of the way Rogers does it, and hopefully the majority will get more by synthesising the two. If you find that Rogers and I disagree, please feel free to ask about it in class since one or both of us may be wrong. |
I recommend that you start reading the book as soon as possible and finish it before the end of the course. I recommend you finish it substantially before the end of the course but try to balance reading quickly with a thorough understanding of the content (some people find it helps to read through once quickly to get the general idea and then read again to get the depth). You are responsible for your own learning so I probably won’t say anything more about this after section 1 of the course. Some comments on the book: The books starts off describing the RP and GA dialects, if you find this confusing turn to the description of Canadian English in Chapter 6. Rogers teaches at U of T, and an earlier version of this book [(1991) Theoretical and practical phonetics. Missasauga, ON: Copp Clark] focussed on Canadian English and French. If your English dialect is something else you may also find it in chapter 6, if you have some other first language, talk to me and might be able to tell you where to find a description of your first language. The book has exercises on spectrogram reading, something I won’t be testing you on. Rogers has a couple of chapters on suprasegmentals, I won’t be covering this in class but encourage you to read what Rogers has to say. There are some appendices in the textbook which you may find useful. Pay attention to the appendix on calligraphy: handwritten forms of phonetic symbols are not always the same as your normal handwritten form of roman letters, e.g., you will loose marks on an exam if your [z] has a bar through it or your [t] looks like a “+”. For more comments on the book, you can read the review I wrote aimed at ESL Teachers |
RECOMMENDED READINGS
Introductory textbooks
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Ladefoged, Peter. (2005). A course in phonetics (5th ed.). Thomson Wadsworth. |
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Ladefoged, Peter. (2001). Vowels and consonant: An introduction to the sounds of languages (2nd ed.).Oxford, UK: / Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell. |
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Ball, Martin J., & Rahilly, Joan. (1999). Phonetics: The science of speech. London: Arnold / New York: Oxford University Press. |
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Ashby, Michael, & Maidment, John. (2005). Introducing phonetic sciences. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. |
These books are at about the same level as Rogers but take somewhat different approaches and have some no-overlapping material. The keen student might want to read at least one of these in addition to Rogers. There are other introductory textbooks out there including Catford and MacKay but those above are my favourites. Ladefoged's A course in phonetics has been around since 1975 and has probably been the most widely used phonetics textbook during the last 30 years. For the purposes of LING205 this is the closest to Rogers, it has been used as a textbook for LING205 and there should be plenty of second-hand copies floating around. Some students have told me that they find Rogers an easier read to begin with, but Ladefoged's A course in phonetics more helpful later on. If you prefer, feel free to read Ladefoged's A course in phonetics instead of Rogers. Ladefoged's Vowels and consonants is supposed to be at a lower level but I’m not sure that this is really the case. It comes with a CD the content of which is also available at http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/
CD ROM introductory textbooks
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Handke, Jürgen (2000). The Mouton interactive introduction
to phonetics and phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. |
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Reid, Nicholas, & Fraser, Helen (2000). Phonetics:
and interactive introduction. Armidale, NSW, Australia: University of New England. |
In general I find these disappointing, I think there is so much more that could have been done. The animations in Handke are far from anatomically accurate.
[There is a review at http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num3/review4/]
Smith, Ian (2002) Higgins
the phonetic tutor (version 3). Toronto, ON: Glossomania.
Video and audio of phonetic symbols being read out loud. Available in Language Lab 109 in the basement of the Arts building.
More advanced textbooks
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Clark, John & Yallop Colin (1995). An introduction to phonetics and phonology (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: / Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell. [two 2nd ed., one 1st ed.: P 217 C593 Rutherford North 4 ] |
I especially like the phonetics chapters in this book and
probably would have used it as the course text if it have also had some
more introductory material - despite it’s title it the book is somewhat
above the introductory level. This is highly recommended reading for the
keen student. I suggest skipping the phonology chapters, at least to begin
with. The kind of phonological research done at U of A is quite different
to that described in Clark & Yallop although from our perspective it is
still important in terms of historical interest (historical here is 1960s
to 1990s). It is not perfect, for example the description of the production
of clicks on page 18 is especially poor.
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Ladefoged, Peter (1996). Elements of acoustic phonetics (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. |
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Johnson, Keith (2003). Acoustic and auditory phonetics. (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: / Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell. |
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Harrington, Jonathan, & Cassidy, Steve (1999). Techniques in speech acoustics. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. |
More in depth coverage of acoustic phonetics than given in Clark & Yallop, Johnson is probably the most accessible.
Reference books
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International Phonetic Association. (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge, UK / New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. |
The holy scriptures.
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Pullum, Geoffrey K., and Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic symbol guide (2nd ed.). Chicago: Chicago University Press. |
Not everyone used IPA, this will help you figure out what
they meant.
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Laver, John (1994). Principles of phonetics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. |
Lots of details on articulatory phonetics.
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Ladefoged, Peter, and Maddieson, Ian (1996). The sounds
of the world’s languages. Oxford, UK / Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. |
How speakers of different languages articulate speech sounds.
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Hardcastle, William J. and Laver, John (eds.). (1997). The
handbook of phonetic sciences. Oxford, UK / Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. |
Introductory articles on different sub-fields in phonetics including areas not covered in the course such as automatic speech recognition by computer, and forensic phonetics.
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Stevens, Kenneth N. (1998). Acoustic phonetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. |
This book is seriously advanced so you probably will not
be reading it just yet, but I mention it here because I referred to it
quite often when preparing the course. The book deals with the acoustic
results of differing vocal tract configurations and it is the first place
I look when I want to know something about this. A background in physics
(especially classical mechanics and acoustics) and/or engineering (especially
classes in signal processing) would be helpful (you don’t really need the
electronic circuits background, the book includes these assuming that engineers
and physicists will be more familiar with them than with acoustics and that
it will help them understand the acoustics).
Article
Ohala, John J. (1983). The origin of sound patterns in vocal
tract constraints. In MacNeilage, Peter F. (ed.) The production of
speech. New York: Springer-Verlag, 189–216.
[QP 306 P96 Cameron 3 / Scott / BARD]
[Online: http://trill.berkeley.edu/users/ohala/papers/macn83.pdf]
If you were one of the keen students that I mentioned above then you should be ready to read this article by the end of the course.