LTL 13: Natural Phonetics and Tonetics

Natural Phonetics and Tonetics

Articulatory, auditory, & functional

Luciano Canepari
University of Venice, Italy

The author, who was trained in the British phonetic tradition and teaches Phonetics and phonology at the University of Venice, has expanded and completed the potential of natural phonetics, i.e. articulatory, auditory, and functional, in order to update and adapt it to the descriptive and teaching needs of several languages and dialects of the world, according to the phonetic method which is explained in the book.

The handbook offers the necessary expansion of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to make it appropriate to adequately deal with hundreds of languages; not only for vowels and consonants, but also for intonation and tones. Hundreds of useful figures are provided, in particular vocograms, orograms, labiograms, palatograms, and tonograms.

The general part, although beginning in a gradual way, deals with all the segmental and suprasegmentals in depth, without neglecting paraphonics (or “paralinguistics”). The handbook provides about 1000 “linguistic sounds” with their symbols, of which at least 500 are basic, 300 complementary, and 200 supplementary.

In the second part, about 320 languages from all over the world are concisely but precisely dealt with (including 72 dead languages).

In a twin volume (A Handbook of Pronunciation) the phonetic method is fully applied, by thoroughly dealing with the pronunciation of 12 languages: English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, and Esperanto.

The new fully revised and up-dated edition includes fairly important additions, integrations, substitutions, and modifications. Its title has changed to clearly show the rich potentialities of the natural approach.

Contents

1. Prelude

Transcriptions
The contents of NPT/HPh (& of HPr)
Observations on phonetic terminology

2. Doing phonetics

Guide to the figures
Guide to different types of transcriptions
Transcribing by hand

3. Pronunciation & phonetics

The phonetic method


4. The phono-articulatory apparatus

The vocal folds
Resonators (5 phono-articulatory cavities)
The lips

5. The classification of sounds

6. A gradual approach

Vowels
Voicing
Consonants
Places of articulation
Manners of articulation
Prosodic elements
Stress
Sentence stress
Tones
Intonation

7. The official IPA & other notations

Official IPA
Consonants
Vowels
Prosodic indications & other diacritics
How come the IPA is not used by everyone?
Quick comparison between ^offIPA & ^canIPA
The official revision of the IPA (1989-96): A missed reform
Official diacritics
Segmental diacritics
Suprasegmental diacritics
Official tones & word accents
About non-IPA alphabets
Comparison with the main non-IPA symbols used in Romance studies
From a couple of IPA to many different non-IPA's
The phonetic alphabet of the ALI: Another example not to follow observations on the (non) ‘respect’ of symbols
Hypostatization & ‘ipastatization’

8. Vowels & vocoids

Other, less useful classifications
More about vocoids
^canIPA vocoids
Articulatory practice
Diphthongs: one phoneme or two?
^canIPA vocoids & correspondent ^off IPA symbols

9. Consonants & contoids (1)

Nasals
Stops
Constrictives (‘fricatives’)
Stop-strictives (‘affricates’)
Approximants
Trills, taps & flaps
Laterals
Memorizing
Articulatory practice

10. Consonants & contoids (2)

Table of the main ^canIPA contoids
^canIPA contoids (displayed according to articolation manners)
Nasals
Stops
Stop-strictives (‘affricates’)
Constrictives (‘fricatives’)
Approximants
Trills, taps & flaps
Laterals
Comparisons between similar contoids

11. Phonic peculiarities

Intense (‘syllabic’) contoids
Coarticulation
Modifications
Variations
Contoids with particular offsets
Prenasalization
‘Aspiration’
Non-pulmonic consonants
Ejective consonants
Injective consonants
Dejective consonants (clicks)
Nasalization of vocoids
Devoicing vocoids
Vocoids in unstressed syllables
Vocoids in singing
Abolition of the term (and concept of) ‘retroflection’
Generic symbols (for phonic categories)

12. Microstructures

Syllables
Scale of syllabicity
Syllabification
Syllables & the speech chain
Length
Stress
Pitch & tones
Tonetic practice

13. Macrostructures
Prominence
Rhythm & rhythm groups
Pauses
Pitch & intonation groups
Paragraph & text
Rate
Intonation
Intonation groups
Preintonemes
Intonemes
Questions
Intonemes modifications
Parentheses & quotations
Considerations on communicative ‘roles’
Considerations on intonation
Structures & generalizations

14. Superstructures

Paraphonics
Pitch
Other paraphonic elements

15. Phonosyntheses

16. Italy

17. Europe

18. Africa

19. Asia

20. Oceania

21. America

22. Dead languages

23. ‘Extraterrestrial’

Utilizable bibliography
Index
Language index

ISBN 9783895866449. LINCOM Textbooks in Linguistics 13. 518pp. 2007.