Название: Investigating Spoken English: A Practical Guide to Phonetics and Phonology Using PraatАвтор: Stefan Benus
Издательство: Palgrave Macmillan
Год: 2021
Страниц: 282
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true), epub
Размер: 31.7 MB
Combining coverage of the key concepts and tools within phonetics and phonology with a systematic introduction to Praat, this textbook provides a lively and engaging 'way in' to the discipline. The author first covers the fundamentals of the articulatory and acoustic aspects of speech and introduces Praat as the main tool for examining and visualising speech. Next, the unit of analysis is gradually expanded (from syllables to words to turns and dialogues) and excerpts of real dialogues exemplify the core concepts for discovering how speech works. The final part of the book brings all the concepts and notions together with commentaries to the transcription of several short excerpts of dialogues. This book will be essential reading for students on undergraduate courses in phonetics and phonology.
According to its authors, Praat is "doing phonetics by computer". Through its graphical interface, several speech analysis functionalities are available: spectrograms, cochleograms, and pitch and formant extraction. Articulatory synthesis, as well as synthesis from pitch, formant, and intensity are also available. Other features are segmentation, labelling using the phonetic alphabet, and computation of statistics. Praat is configurable and extensible through its own scripting language and has provisions for communicating with other programs. It can run on a wide range of operating systems, including various versions of Unix, Linux, Mac and Microsoft Windows.
Who Is This Book for?
Both native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers of English are the target audience of this book. For native speakers, the activities and discussions strengthen the awareness and self-exploration of their everyday speaking by focusing consciously on the production and auditory characteristics of speech. The non-native speakers will discover how the speaking patterns of English differ from the patterns they have in their native language, and become more aware of the interference the native language patterns might have on speaking English. For non-natives I might occasionally give some guidelines to working on these new patterns to approximate their non-native English to native English if they wish to do so. However, the book is not going to provide specific instructions or discuss the interference of various L1 mother tongues on speaking L2 English. For this awareness, the instructor of the course is an expert. That said, the skills in experimentally investigating speaking patterns can be put to use in multiple mini-projects comparing L1 and L2 English.
“The book brings a practical approach to understanding spoken English in a compelling and lucid way. It is filled with simple, hands-on suggestions for engaging with your own speech and testing a wide range of ideas in phonetics and phonology. Its presentation of intonation and prosody is exciting and masterful. A must for any students wishing to gain a rapid, broad-ranging and very accessible understanding of how sounds are put to use in speech communication.” Jonathan Harrington, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich
“A wealth of practical hands-on activities and follow-up commentaries guide the reader toward their own discoveries and understanding the foundations that provide for our ability to communicate in English in its true form as a spoken language. The phonetic analyses make the book valuable for anyone interested in speech and its relation to language in general. This includes all speakers of English! Moreover, the book appears to be excellent also for self-guided and distance-based learning.” -Martti Vainio, University of Helsinki
“Praat is today the most widely used program for the automatic analysis of speech. The software is extensively documented but does not provide the basic knowledge of phonetics and phonology needed to use it efficiently. The first book in English to cover both Praat and the fields of phonetics and phonology, this will be an extremely valuable resource for the many thousands of Praat-users who do not have a solid background in speech sciences.” -Daniel Hirst, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) & Aix-Marseille University
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