Phonetics for Dummies

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.

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."

Part I: Getting Started with Phonetics  7

Chapter 1: Understanding the A-B-Cs of Phonetics 9

Chapter 2: The Lowdown on the Science of Speech Sounds 15

Chapter 3: Meeting the IPA: Your New Secret Code 37

Chapter 4: Producing Speech: The How-To 51

Chapter 5: Classifying Speech Sounds: Your Gateway to Phonology 73

Part II: Speculating about English Speech Sounds  91

Chapter 6: Sounding Out English Consonants 93

Chapter 7: Sounding Out English Vowels 107

Chapter 8: Getting Narrow with Phonology 123

Chapter 9: Perusing the Phonological Rules of English 131

Chapter 10: Grasping the Melody of Language 145

Chapter 11: Marking Melody in Your Transcription 157

Part III: Having a Blast: Sound, Waveforms, and Speech Movement  169

Chapter 12: Making Waves: An Overview of Sound 171

Chapter 13: Reading a Sound Spectrogram 191

Chapter 14: Confi rming That You Just Said What I Thought You Said 219

Part IV: Going Global with Phonetics  235

Chapter 15: Exploring Different Speech Sources 237

Chapter 16: Visiting Other Places, Other Manners 253

Chapter 17: Coming from the Mouths of Babes 277

Chapter 18: Accentuating Accents 291

Chapter 19: Working with Broken Speech 315

Part V: The Part of Tens  333

Chapter 20: Ten Common Mistakes That Beginning Phoneticians Make and How to Avoid Them 335

Chapter 21: Debunking Ten Myths about Various English Accents 341

Index  347

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