This book presents an experimental-phonetic approach to the study of intonation, defined as the ensemble of pitch variations in speech. It gives a detailed explication of the analysis of intonation by means of the stylization method: studying the perceptual consequences of deliberate simplifications of speech melody makes it possible to give a description in terms of perceptually relevant, discrete events. Theoretical insights and the acoustic, perceptual, and physiological experimental evidence that supports them are amply discussed. Phoneticians and speech scientists will find the innovative, unique features of this book of interest.

Explores the nature of stress and accent patterns in natural language using a diverse range of theories, methods and data.

Intonation is a subject of increasing importance in fields from syntax to speech recognition. D. Robert Ladd provides an exceptionally clear presentation of the key ideas of the influential autosegmental-metrical theory of intonational phonology associated with the work of Janet Pierrehumbert. He outlines the evidence for the theory's basic tenets and relates them to the ideas of competing approaches in a way that will allow sceptics to reach an informed opinion and he presents a wealth of new material on the cross-language comparison of intonation couched in autosegmental-metrical terms. He also draws attention to problems in Pierrehumbert's version of the autosegmental-metrical theory, and offers some theoretical proposals of his own. This book will appeal to phonologists and phoneticians as an original contribution to the debates it discusses, and will be welcomed by a wide range of students and researchers as an ideal overview of recent work.

Review text: "This volume contains exciting and potentially valuable new contributions that attempts to expand our understanding of the role of phonology and phonetics in speech perception. This volume has much to contribute for not just linguistics, but psycholinguistics more generally, and so concepts contained in this volume should form the basis of many discussions in future speech perception studies."Andrew Blyth in: Linguist List 21.3465.

The Handbook of Speech Perception is a collection of forward-looking articles that offer a summary of the technical and theoretical accomplishments in this vital area of research on language. Now available in paperback, this uniquely comprehensive companion brings together in one volume the latest research conducted in speech perception Contains original contributions by leading researchers in the field Illustrates technical and theoretical accomplishments and challenges across the field of research and language Adds to a growing understanding of the far-reaching relevance of speech perception in the fields of phonetics, audiology and speech science, cognitive science, experimental psychology, behavioral neuroscience, computer science, and electrical engineering, among others.

This book contains a collection of papers exploring the cross-linguistic expression of topic and focus. A diverse set of perspectives from some of the leading scholars in the areas of semantics and intonation are represented in the collection, which is based on papers presented at the Topic and Focus Workshop at the 2001 LSA Summer Institute in Santa Barbara. This book is unique in the breadth of its typological coverage of topic and focus phenomena. Material is presented from nine languages, including several that are severely under-documented from a theoretical perspective. The expression of topic and focus are integral aspects of linguistic communication that introduce the content of discourse and emphasize its most crucial elements. Topic and focus phenomena are complex and involve both a meaning and a prosodic component. This book is the first collection of papers devoted to the rigorous examination of both semantic and intonational features of topic and focus from a broad typological perspective.

Phonology - the study of how the sounds of speech are represented in our minds - is one of the core areas of linguistic theory, and is central to the study of human language. This handbook brings together the world's leading experts in phonology to present the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the field. Focusing on research and the most influential theories, the authors discuss each of the central issues in phonological theory, explore a variety of empirical phenomena, and show how phonology interacts with other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology, phonetics, and language acquisition. Providing a one-stop guide to every aspect of this important field, The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology will serve as an invaluable source of readings for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, an informative overview for linguists and a useful starting point for anyone beginning phonological research.