A text for the study of linquistics. It presents technical terms required for describing speech and transcription symbols and phonetics of English and other languages. It is accompanied by a CD-ROM that contains more than 4,000 audio files, including recordings of speech from southern and northern US cities, London, Dublin, and New Zealand.

Product Description: This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics is now available in a fully updated second edition. Peter Ladefoged describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages...read more

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This revised and expanded edition of the classic Elements of Acoustic Phonetics provides a concise introduction to basic concepts of acoustics and digital speech processing that are important to linguists, phoneticians, and speech scientists.The second edition includes four new chapters that cover new experimental techniques in acoustic phonetics made possible by the use of computers. Assuming no background in physics or mathematics, Ladefoged explains concepts that must be understood in using modern laboratory techniques for acoustic analysis, including resonances of the vocal tract and the relation of formants to different cavities; digital speech processing and computer storage of sound waves; and Fourier analysis and Linear Predictive Coding, the equations used most frequently in the analysis of speech sounds. Incorporating recent developments in our knowledge of the nature of speech, Ladefoged also updates the original edition's discussion of the basic properties of sound waves; variations in loudness, pitch, and quality of speech sounds; wave analysis; and the hearing and production of speech.