Fonética y fonología españolas by Richard Barrutia and Tracy David Terrell (review)

282ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW Richard Barrutia and Tracy David Terrell. Fonética y fonología españolas. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982. 189p. In a field of study generally reserved for the specialist, it is refreshing to see that attention is given to the neophyte — that an introductory work is offered to explain, exemplify and exercise concepts foreign to most students of the Spanish language. The co-authors are able to draw from extensive and proven backgrounds (Prof. Barrutia in applied Hispanic linguistics and Prof. Terrell in regional, descriptive linguistics and as co-author of an earlier text Lingüística aplicada) to provide the third- or fourth-year college student with a working knowledge of terminology and a progressive capacity for identification and exercise of phonetic/phonological processes. From the prefaces (one for the instructor and another for the student) to the appendices, the book is written entirely in Spanish, except for a bilingual glossary and contrastive English examples. I find the distribution of material somewhat unusual: chapter 1 discusses the syllable and syllabification in Spanish (without ever defining the term "syllable"); chapters 2, 3 and 4 consider the Spanish vowel; chapter 5 defines the consonant and chapter 6, the phoneme. Chapter 7 introduces the concept of phonetic transcription and chapters 8 through 14 offer phonetic/phonemic analyses of the Spanish consonantal system. By far the most detailed and illustrative chapter to this point is that on the phoneme and allophone (chapt. 6), with especially good final explanations of the terms. The authors make frequent use of minimal pairs both in English (e.g., /d/ vs. M, /?/??] and [ph]) and Spanish (e.g., /d/4»[d] and [S], /r/ vs. /F/, and others). Examples are also drawn from other languages (Latin and Thai) to show where an articulatory distinction may be phonemic in one language and allophonic in another. Another very successful chapter (7) provides the student with a methodical, step-bystep introduction to phonetic transcription through a series of directed exercises with a provided text. Chapters 15 and 16 supply the suprasegmental topics of entonation and orthographical accent, respectively. In chapter 15, 1 lament the lack of contrastive references to English. The text is designed to achieve the goal (among others) of correcting faulty pronunciation in Spanish on the part of the English speaker. Certainly, entonation is a significant factor of "accent" and a cause for semantic error. The work on written accents (chapt. 16) is excellent and well provided with detail and pertinent exercises, although this material is considerably more basic than the earlier presented phonetic transcriptions. After a short chapter on orthography, the study of phonetics and phonemics of Standard Spanish of the socalled "high countries" of Mexico, Colombia and Peru (p. vi) is concluded. There follows a series of five "interest" chapters which an instructor could choose to follow in or out of sequence or eliminate, as the dictates of time and course description demand. Chapter 18 inserts a discussion of the English vocalic system; chapter 19 provides an informative exposition of the position (concentrations and diversity) of Spanish in the modern world and the two following chapters (20 and 21) study the similarities and dissimilarities of Peninsular Spanish and New World Spanish, respectively. Chapter (22) discusses an area totally lacking in the traditional texts on Spanish phonetics and phonemics for the generalist — "Spanish as spoken in the United States." Here, the three predominant Hispanic groups (Mexican, Puerto Rican and Cuban) are identified and salient linguistic distinctions are made. With minor changes, I would like to have seen chapters 19 and 22 precede the "working" text; they are introductory in nature and include no student exercises. A personal preference for a redistribution of materials and technical faults (the text is marred by numerous printing errors) notwithstanding, Fonética y fonología Book Reviews283 españolas offers the field of Hispanic linguistics a provident and manageable tool for the beginning student. The text is designed for easy completion in one semester and provides the student with detailed explanations on every point introduced, followed by graded exercises. (The usual failing of the specialist's text is that there is no vehicle for exercising and testing the student...