Phonetic Interpretation

Book excerpt: First published in 2003, Phonetic Interpretation presents innovative work from four core areas: phonological representations and the lexicon, phonetic interpretation and phrasal structure, phonetic interpretation and syllable structure, and phonology and natural speech production. Written by major figures in the fields of phonetics, phonology and speech perception, the chapters in this volume use a wide range of laboratory and instrumental techniques to analyse the production and perception of speech, their aim being to explore the relationship between the sounds of speech and the linguistic organisation that lies behind that. The chapters present evidence of the lively intellectual engagement of laboratory phonology practitioners with the complexities and richness of human language. The book continues the tradition of the series, Papers in Laboratory Phonology, by bringing linguistic theory to bear on an essential problem of linguistics: the relationship between mental models and the physical nature of speech.