The Pronunciation of English: A Course Book (review)

Charles Kreidler is well known as the editor of Phonology: Critical concepts(6 vols.; London: Routledge, 2000). This is the revised edition of his excellent (1989) textbook on English phonetics and phonology. A look through the glossary of technical terms informs the prospective reader of the book’s contents (284–95). I expected to encounter terms such as allophone, allomorph, assimilation, aspiration, constraint, neutralization, schwa, and so on; however, I did not expect to find deep structure or Great Vowel Shift. The term approximant is conspicuously absent (also from the index).

The fourteen well-organized chapters cover all of the fundamentals of phonological analysis, English consonantal and vocalic phonemes with their allophones, and the phonotactic structure of English. As might be anticipated, K thoroughly treats rhythm, stress, and intonation in addition to the phonological processes involved in casual speech. More than eighty exercises allow students to master the material presented.

Chs. 1 and 2 cover such topics as language variation, hearing, resonance, the differences between speech and language, and the history of English. The latter topic seems out of place in a work of this type.

Chs. 3 and 4 present the consonants, vowels, and glides. I see little advantage to K’s replacing the term labial with lip consonant (34). The information on dialectal differences is germane and useful (46–48).

Ch. 5 contains information on syllables and stress. I do not believe it helps students to read that when an Old English affix is added to a word, in has no effect on stress, whereas when words have been borrowed from Greco-Latin or French sources, there is often a stress shift ( origin, original, originality, 79).

Ch. 6 on phonotactics wisely contains a brief section on borrowed words as exceptions to phonotactic constraints (e.g. pueblowith * pw-, 100).

Ch. 7 discusses consonant and vowel variation. In his discussion of gemination, K repeats information found in a plethora of texts, viz. that English has geminated consonants across morpheme boundaries. He specifically mentions unknown(116). Here, I agree with Bertil Malmberg ( Phonetics, New York: Dover, 1963, p. 77, n. 3), who mentions degemination in un[k]nownfor many speakers. (See now my ‘Gemination in English’, English Today21.43–55, 2005.)

Ch. 8 deals with the consequences of phonotactics. The discussion of plural and possessive allomorphy uses /- iz/ for the far more common /-əz/ or /-ɨz/ (e.g. churches). Similarly, he uses the transcription /- id/ for /-əd/ or /-ɨd/ for the past tense (e.g. waited).

In the remarks on allophonic vowel nasalization, K affirms that ‘the /ə/ in an aim… is likely to be nasalized, while the /ə/ in a name… is not nasalized’ (136). A vowel before a nasal consonant tends to be nasalized (see Peter Ladefoged, A course in phonetics, 4th edn., Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2001, p. 84).

Ch. 9 is on the rhythm of English speech. K explains herein why English is a stress timing, not a syllable timing, language.

Ch. 10 covers intonation. Happily, K makes good use of the outstanding work by Dwight L. Bolinger.

Ch. 11 presents basic stress rules, essentially following Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle ( The sound pattern of English, New York: Harper and Row, 1968).

Ch. 12 covers prefixes, compounds, and phrases. Many excellent observations will help motivate students to get involved in these intricate data; for example, bisectis sometimes stressed on its initial syllable, and influenced by this verb, dissectfollows along similar lines.

The final two chapters explain the phonological processes of vowel reduction, vowel and consonant loss, progressive and regressive assimilation including palatalization ( did you), spirantization ( part, partial), velar softening ( electric, electricity), and vowel shifts ( goose, gosling). Once again, the indebtedness to Chomsky & Halle 1968 is obvious.

Two remarks on the author’s bibliography (296–302) are in order. K should have used Ladefoged’s 4th edition of A course in phonetics(2001), not his 3rd (1993). I would also recommend the...