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  • Acoustic phonetics by Kenneth N. Stevens
  • Belinda Collins
Acoustic phonetics. By Kenneth N. Stevens. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Pp. 607.

This comprehensive examination of speech sound generation in the human vocal system is written for speech scientists, speech pathologists, linguists with an interest in phonetics and phonology, those working in areas related to speech perception and speech production, and engineers who are concerned with speech processing applications. It can be divided into four sections. Chs. 1–3 cover the production of speech sounds. Fundamentally an explication of source filter theory, it reviews the anatomy of the speech production system and explains the mechanisms of sound source generation in the vocal tract. It presents theories of the vocal tract as an acoustic resonator and discusses some principles which relate airflows to pressures in the vocal tract.

Ch. 4 examines the auditory processing of speech sounds, including auditory physiology and basic auditory psychophysics. Ch. 5 puts production and perception into a linguistic framework by examining the phonological representation of utterances at the levels of words, segments and features.

Chs. 6–9 examine the production of vowels and consonants in detail, including the relations between the discrete linguistic features and their articulatory and acoustic manifestations. The chapters on consonants include discussion based on Steven’s work on quantal theory, the examination of points at which minimal changes in articulatory parameters produce maximal acoustic contrastivity. These chapters are particularly comprehensive, synthesizing the information presented so far and placing it in an analytic framework.

The final chapter looks at some of the influences of linguistic context on speech sound production, particularly on consonant sequences, and the effects of context on vowel production and boundary effects on articulatory parameters. Context is discussed at the level of syllable, word, and sentence.

An important aim of the book is to demonstrate that ‘when reasonable assumptions are made about the physiological parameters involved in producing a sound sequence, acoustic theory can make predictions about the sound pattern, and these predictions agree well with the measured pattern’ (viii).

The book focuses on sounds in English, using examples from English to model the production of speech sounds. It does include general reference to language types such as tone languages and to articulations such as clicks when discussing vocal tract activity which can be used linguistically, but these are not applicable to English. However, comprehensive explication and analysis of articulations which do not occur in English are not included in this work.

The book is notable for the range of topics covered and the comprehensive level of detail. Relationships or explanations that are not always evident when looking through the lens of a single discipline become apparent when information is presented in detail from a broader perspective. However, this can also mean that information relevant to unfamiliar disciplines is difficult to understand. For example, sections on aerodynamics may be difficult for linguists to come to grips with, and those unfamiliar with equivalent circuit diagrams will need to do some additional conceptual work. Nevertheless the reader should persevere. The combination of breadth and depth are the strengths of this work, making it suitable for postgraduates and researchers working in any of the disciplines mentioned.

Belinda Collins
Australian National University
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