This reference dictionary provides a user-friendly pronunciation guide for over 12,000 placenames worldwide. Avoiding the unconventional characters and symbols of the traditional International Phonetic Alphabet, the author writes with an easy-to-read phonetic alphabet, which uses only standard English letters. From Aachen, Germany (pronounced Ah kun) to Zywiec, Poland (pronounced Zhi vets), entries include familiar world placenames, both historic and current, as well as several less familiar names which have uncertain or difficult pronunciations. An appendix provides a useful directory to the most well-known countries, regions, and cities which have placenames that differ significantly between native and English pronunciations.

The Indo-Aryan languages, spoken by at least 700 million people in the Republic of India, in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldive Islands, and in countries where immigrants from South Asia have settled, constitute a major group within the Indo-European family. They have a claim to great antiquity, with the earliest Vedic Sanskrit texts dating to the end of the second millennium B.C. This language family supplies a historical documentation of language change over a longer period than any other subgroup of Indo-European. Further, the interaction between Indo-Aryan and Dravidan, Munda, and Tibeto-Burmese languages as well as Arabic and other Indo-European languages affords a rich field of study for borrowing and adaptation. Major features of Indo-Aryan languages have been described before, but there is a need for a synoptic treatment of these languages.

This book discusses the phonological consequences of the backness distinction in high vowels. It focuses on a single-phoneme approach which does not recognize the existence of the vowel y. The author demonstrates that the role of y is crucial for the analysis of Polish palatalization. If y is recognized as a separate phoneme, then the processes receive a straightforward account in Lexical Phonology and Optimality Theory, the two frameworks used in the study. On the other hand, the absence of y leads to unwarranted exceptionality and entails an extensive use of diacritics or lexical constraints. The analyses show, however, that the lack of y is empirically unfeasible and requires segment indexation, a solution unheard of in phonology.

This volume seeks to reevaluate the nature of tone-segment interactions in phonology. The contributions address, among other things, the following basic questions: what tone-segment interactions exist, and how can the facts be incorporated into phonological theory? Are interactions between tones and vowel quality really universally absent? What types of tone-consonant interactions do we find across languages? What is the relation between diachrony and synchrony in relevant processes? The contributions discuss data from various types of languages where tonal information plays a lexically distinctive role, from 'pure' tone languages to so-called tone accent systems, where the occurrence of contrastive tonal melodies is restricted to stressed syllables. The volume has an empirical emphasis on Franconian dialects in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, but also discusses languages as diverse as Slovenian, Livonian, Fuzhou Chinese, and Xhosa.

Contents:
Acknowledgements
1. Background
2. The Phonetics of Contour Tones
3. Empirical Predictions of Different Approaches
4. The Role of Contrast-Specific Phonetics in Contour Tone Distribution: A Survey
5. The Role of Contrast-Specific Phonetics in Contour Tone Distribution: Instrumental Studies
6. Against Structure-Only alternatives
7. A Phonetically-Driven Optimality-Theoretic Approach
8. Case Studies
9. Conclusion

A voice is much more than just a string of words. Voices, unlike fingerprints, are inherently complex. They signal a great deal of information in addition to the intended message: the speakers' sex, for example, or their emotional state, or age. Although evidence from DNA analysis grabs the headlines, DNA can't talk. It can't be recorded planning, carrying-out or confessing to a crime. It can't be so apparently directly incriminating. Perhaps it is these features which contribute to the interest and importance of Forensic Speaker Identification (FSI)
Forensic Speaker Identification explains what FSI involves, and clarifies the problems of inferring identity from speech under the less than ideal conditions typical in forensics. It will allow the reader to appreciate:
*the complexities of voice sample comparison
*the probabilistic nature of the technique - it will not yield absolute identification or exclusion of a suspect
*the difficulties introduced by differential variation within and between voices and the generally poor degree of control over forensic samples
*acoustic and auditory comparison and the comparison of linguistic and non-linguistic features
*the expertise required in linguistics, acoustics and statistics.
This book has been written for forensic scientists, the legal profession and law enforcement officers. It's accessible to those with no previous knowledge of FSI, or of phonetics or acoustics. It can also be used as a base for teaching tertiary level courses in aspects of phonetics.
This practical, lucid text takes the reader through all the underpinning knowledge necessary, and will bring much needed clarity to an important technique.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203166361

This volume provides the most comprehensive and authoritative collection of the key readings in phonological theory.It includes key classic and contemporary readings in the main areas of phonological research, including autosegmental phonology, syllable structure, lexical phonology, metrical phonology, the phonology/syntax interface and optimality theory, complemented by introductions and bibliography.Designed to complement the outstanding Handbook of Phonological Theory, this volume is ideal as a primary text for course use. It also represents an unparalleled work of reference for anyone interested in recent developments in linguistic theory.

Production, Perception and Phontactic Patterns presents the first experimental study of articulatory dynamics of Russian and of secondary articulents in general, with a special focus on the nature of positional markedness scales, one of the key concepts in the current phonological theory (Optimality Theory). Through a series of experiments the author questions the traditional assumption that positional markedness scales are directly encoded in Universal Grammar and provides an alternative account based on gestural recoverability. This study combines a sophisticated and in-depth analysis of language-particular phonetic detail with wide cross-linguistic generalisations and contributes to the increasingly influential body of research that investigates phonetic factors in the search for explanations of phonological universals.

Contents:
Chapter One: Introduction and Prosodic Preliminaries
Chapter Two: Historical Gemination
Chapter Three: Raddoppiamento sintattico: Data
Chapter Four: Synchronic Analyses
Chapter Five: Lenition
Chapter Six: Analysis
References

"A Workbook in Phonology" has been written to accompany "A Course in Phonology," but may be used as a self-contained work or in conjunction with other teaching books. It contains over a hundred exercises, arranged in order of difficulty within each section, and covering the areas of distinctive features, underspecification, syllables, stress, tone, the phonology/morphology interface, phonological domains, derivational formalism, and Optimality Theory.

As an accompanying volume, it is specifically related to the chapters and sections of "A Course in Phonology," and it includes an Exercise Cross-Reference Table to facilitate its use.

Contents:
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Conservation approaches to compensatory lengthening
Chapter 3. Conditions on CVC compensatory lengthening
Chapter 4. Conditions on CVCV compensatory lengthening
Chapter 5. Synchronic CL: an analysis and implications
Chapter 6. Summary and conclusions
Appendix I: Languages with CVC CL
Appendix II: Languages with CVCV CL
References
Index

This book provides evidence for the importance of auditory properties of speech sounds in phonology. The basic evidence derives from phonological processes which group together classes of sounds which have no articulatory commonality, but do share auditory features. The book contains analyses of such phenoma drawn from diverse languages.

Contents:
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Laryngeal and Phonatory Features and Representations
3. Assimilation
4. Deglottalization
5. Debuccalization
6. Dissimilation
7. Ejective Voicing
8. Fission and Fusion
9. Conclusion
Endnotes
References

The topic of the book is the relationship between mind and language on all levels of linguistic research. Over the past decade, the cognitive approach to language and its methodology have started to permeate other areas of linguistic study, which, in turn, is opening up room for new types of research and resulting in new knowledge that contributes to explaining not only the linguistic phenomena, but also how they function in a linguistic community and contemporary society. The book tries to reflect these new developments. It consists of 11 chapters organized into three thematic sections: language and mind from linguistic perspective, the language and mind of the translator, and language and mind from the teacher's perspective.

"What are the implications of teaching phonics via a systematic direct intense program that mandates all children to experience the same scripted lesson at the same time?"
This book addresses the question through an in-depth play-by-play description of a phonics lesson as it occurred in a real classroom, followed by chapters that look at it from different angles by "zooming in" on one facet to analyze it closely:
*Reading. What is reading? What definition of reading is presented (implicitly) in the phonics lesson? What do competing definitions from the reading research literature say about how important phonics rules are and how they are used by readers and teachers of reading?
*Teacher knowledge. What is the role and the place of teacher knowledge as it relates to the lesson? What are the skills a teacher has and needs to use in a lesson that is completely scripted ?
*The children. What are their roles and positions during the lesson? What are they learning?
*Curriculum. Where does the phonics curriculum come from? Curriculum in general? Who does it serve and how? What is its purpose?
* Culture. What is the role of culture in the lesson? How do cultural differences and culturally relevant pedagogy relate to the scripted phonics lesson?
*Politics and ideology. Why and how is everything that happens in schools political? How are scripted lessons and resistance to them, forms of political action?
*Teacher professionalism. How can teachers act in order to maintain academic freedom expressed as professional decision making in classrooms?
The author of this book is not neutral. He presents the difficulties a teacher encounters in implementing mandated systematic, direct, intense phonics instruction and children who are confused and frustrated by it. But at the same time he constantly presents hope in the form of smart teachers, curious children, and possibilities for taking action that can lead to change. His direct, accessible writing style stimulates thought and discussion.

Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Figures
List of Tables
1. Introduction
2. Articulatory Effort
3. Representational Issues
4. Spirantization and Stridency
5. Germinates
6. Effort-Based Contexts
7. Tumposia Shoshone
8. Florentine Italian
9. Conclusion. Stabilization of Lenition Patterns
Notes
References
Index

Contents:
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
List of symbols
1. Introduction
2. General Methodology
3. Bernese
4. Cross-language Study. Phonological Overview
5. Cross-language Study. Acoustic Investigations
6. Suprasegmental Timing
7. An Integrated Timing Model
Appendix 1. Bernese Word List
Appendix 2. Levantine Word List
Appendix 3. Hungarian Word List
Appendix 4. Maudrese Word List
References
Index

Breaking away from previously rigid descriptions of the linguistic system of the English language, Crossing Linguistic Boundaries explores fascinating case studies which refuse to fall neatly within the traditional definitions of linguistic domains and boundaries. Bringing together leading international scholars in English linguistics, this volume focusses on these controversies in relation to seeking to overcome the temporal and geographical limits of the English language. Approaching tensions in the areas of English phonology and phonetics, pragmatics, semantics, morphology and syntax, chapters discuss not only British and American English but also a wide variety of geographical variants. Containing synchronic and diachronic studies covering different periods in the history of English, Crossing Linguistic Boundaries will appeal to anyone interested in linguistic variation in English.

"What are the implications of teaching phonics via a systematic direct intense program that mandates all children to experience the same scripted lesson at the same time?"
This book addresses the question through an in-depth play-by-play description of a phonics lesson as it occurred in a real classroom, followed by chapters that look at it from different angles by zooming in on one facet to analyze it closely:
*Reading. What is reading? What definition of reading is presented (implicitly) in the phonics lesson? What do competing definitions from the reading research literature say about how important phonics rules are and how they are used by readers and teachers of reading?
*Teacher knowledge. What is the role and the place of teacher knowledge as it relates to the lesson? What are the skills a teacher has and needs to use in a lesson that is completely scripted ?
*The children. What are their roles and positions during the lesson? What are they learning?
*Curriculum. Where does the phonics curriculum come from? Curriculum in general? Who does it serve and how? What is its purpose?
* Culture. What is the role of culture in the lesson? How do cultural differences and culturally relevant pedagogy relate to the scripted phonics lesson?
*Politics and ideology. Why and how is everything that happens in schools political? How are scripted lessons and resistance to them, forms of political action?
*Teacher professionalism. How can teachers act in order to maintain academic freedom expressed as professional decision making in classrooms?
The author of this book is not neutral. He presents the difficulties a teacher encounters in implementing mandated systematic, direct, intense phonics instruction and children who are confused and frustrated by it. But at the same time he constantly presents hope in the form of smart teachers, curious children, and possibilities for taking action that can lead to change. His direct, accessible writing style stimulates thought and discussion.

This book investigates the nature of the relationship between phonology and syntax and proposes a theory of Minimal Indirect Reference that solves many classic problems relating to the topic. Seidl shows that all variation across languages in phonological domain size is due to syntactic differences and a single domain parameter specific to phonology.

This volume proposes a unified weight theory that challenges traditionally held beliefs regarding the vowel/consonant dichotomy inherent in moraicity and illuminates many previously intractable issues.

The Substance of Language Volume I: The Domain of Syntax Volume II: Morphology Paradigms, and Periphrases Volume III: Phonology-Syntax Analogies John M. Anderson The three volumes of The Substance of Language collectively overhaul linguistic theory from phonology to semantics and syntax to pragmatics and offer a full account of how the form/function relationship works in language. Each explores the consequences for the investigation of language of a conviction that all aspects of linguistic structure are grounded in the non-linguistic mental faculties on which language imposes its own structure. The first and third look at how syntax and phonology are fed by a lexical component that includes morphology and which unites representations in the two planes. The second examines the way morphology is embedded in the lexicon as part of the expression of the lexicon-internal relationships of words. Morphology , Paradigms, and Periphrases is concerned with the role of the lexicon, in particular its inflectional morphology, in mediating between the substantively different categories of syntax and phonology. In the first part of the book Professor Anderson looks at the central role of the paradigm in reconciling the demands of syntactic categorization with the available means of expression. He examines the expressive role of inflection, illustrating his argument with Old English verb morphology. In the second part of the book the author pursues the notion of grammatical periphrasis. He starts out from its role as a solver of the problem of defective or incomplete paradigms and then compares it with other analytic expressions. He concludes with a discussion of why studies of grammatical periphrasis have focused on verbal constructions. He looks at the mechanism by which grammatical periphrases compensate for gaps in the finite verb paradigm and what this reveals about the substantive differences between verbs and nouns. The many detailed proposals of John Anderson's fine trilogy are derived from an over-arching conception of the nature of linguistic knowledge that is in turn based on the grounding of syntax in semantics and the grounding of phonology in phonetics, both convincingly subsumed under the notion of cognitive salience. The Substance of Language is a major contribution to linguistic theory and the history of linguistic thought.

Even though second-language learners may master the grammar and vocabulary of the new languages, they almost never achieve a native phonology (accent). Scholars and professionals dealing with second-language learners would agree that this is one of the most persistent challenges they face.
Now, for the first time, Roy Major's "Foreign Accent" covers the exploding scholarship in this area and lays out the issues specifically for audiences in the second language acquisition and applied linguistics community.

This book provides a detailed examination of the phonetics and phonology of consonant strength, drawing data from parallel acoustic and articulatory studies of English and Spanish, as well as a cross-linguistic survey of lenition and fortition. Explicit predictions about strength are tested for consonants of all manners of articulation, revealing evidence for aspects of several prevalent phonological views of lenition.
This book will be of interest to scholars of phonology, phonetics, and the phonetics-phonology interface. It includes a detailed discussion of methodology, as well as illustrative spectrograms and palatograms.

The main focus of this timely volume is phonological acquisition or the process of mastering a second language facilitated by guidance and direction. This thematic volume of recent research in the field comes at a time when phonology - always one of the liveliest areas of theoretical linguistic inquiry - is starting to enjoy a much-deserved resurgence of interest and writings within the realm of second-language acquisition. The scope of coverage in this volume includes phonological acquisition as well as requirements of language education where phonology refers not only to linguistically relevant dimensions of speech but related concerns of psychology as well.