Patterns of Sounds describes the frequency and distributional patterns of the phonemic sounds in a large and representative sample of the world's languages. The results are based on UPSID (the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database), a computer file containing the phonemes of 317 languages selected on the basis of genetic diversity. The book contains nine chapters analysing the UPSID data, as well as fully labelled phoneme charts for each language and a comprehensive segment index. Questions of the frequency and co-occurrence of the particular segment types are discussed in detail and possible explanations for the patterns observed are evaluated. The book is thus both a report on the research into phoneme inventory structure that has been done using UPSID and a resource that provides the reader with the tools to extend that research.

Based on research on the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database.

Poets, academics, and those who simply speak a language are subject to mysterious intuitions about the perceptual qualities and emotional symbolism of the sounds of speech. Such intuitions are Reuven Tsur's point of departure in this investigation into the expressive effect of sound patterns, addressing questions of great concern for literary theorists and critics as well as for linguists and psychologists. Research in recent decades has established two distinct types of aural perception: a nonspeech mode, in which the acoustic signals are received in the manner of musical sounds or natural noises; and a speech mode, in which acoustic signals are excluded from awareness and only an abstract phonetic category is perceived. Here, Tsur proposes a third type of speech perception, a poetic mode in which some part of the acoustic signal becomes accessible, however faintly, to consciousness. Using Roman Jakobson's model of childhood acquisition of the phonological system, Tsur shows how the nonreferential babbling sounds made by infants form a basis for aesthetic valuation of language. He tests the intersubjective and intercultural validity of various spatial and tactile metaphors for certain sounds. Illustrating his insights with reference to particular literary texts, Tsur considers the relative merits of cognitive and psychoanalytic approaches to the emotional symbolism of speech sounds.

Since this classic work in phonology was published in 1968, there has been no other book that gives as broad a view of the subject, combining generally applicable theoretical contributions with analysis of the details of a single language. The theoretical issues raised in The Sound Pattern of English continue to be critical to current phonology, and in many instances the solutions proposed by Chomsky and Halle have yet to be improved upon.Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle are Institute Professors of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.

Throughout the book, spelling patterns are introduced in carefully graded steps. At the end of each book Check up revision sections reinforce spellings already learned by a variety of interesting exercises which link sound and spelling patterns.

Evolutionary Phonology is a theory of sound patterns which synthesizes results in historical linguistics, phonetics and phonological theory. In this book, Juliette Blevins explores the nature of sounds patterns and sound change in human language over the past 7000–8000 years, the time depth for which the comparative method is reasonably reliable. This book presents an approach to the problem of how genetically unrelated languages, from families as far apart as Native American, Australian Aboriginal, Austronesian and Indo-European, can often show similar sound patterns, and also tackles the converse problem of why there are notable exceptions to most of the patterns that are often regarded as universal tendencies or constraints. It argues that in both cases, a formal model of sound change that integrates phonetic variation and patterns of misperception can account for attested sound systems without reference to markedness or naturalness within the synchronic grammar.

This text is a compendium of information about the pronunciation of casual English (English as it is used un-self-consciously in informal situations). It does not depend on prior knowledge of any particular phonological theory, but does require basic knowledge of linguistics.