Phonetic Symbol Guide [Paperback]

Geoffrey K. Pullum (Author), William A. Ladusaw (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226685365 | ISBN-13: 978-0226685366 | Publication Date: July 30, 1996 | Edition: 1

Phonetic Symbol Guide is a comprehensive and authoritative encyclopedia of phonetic alphabet symbols, providing a complete survey of the hundreds of characters used by linguists and speech scientists to record the sounds of the world's languages.

This fully revised second edition incorporates the major revisions to the International Phonetic Alphabet made in 1989 and 1993. Also covered are the American tradition of transcription stemming from the anthropological school of Franz Boas; the Bloch/Smith/Trager style of transcription; the symbols used by dialectologists of the English language; usages of specialists such as Slavicists, Indologists, Sinologists, and Africanists; and the transcription proposals found in all major textbooks of phonetics.

With sixty-one new entries, an expanded glossary of phonetic terms, added symbol charts, and a full index, this book will be an indispensable reference guide for students and professionals in linguistics, phonetics, anthropology, philology, modern language study, and speech science.

Product Details

• Paperback: 358 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (July 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226685365
• ISBN-13: 978-0226685366
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #331,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Generally usable, but it could have been so much more., November 17, 2004

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Phonetic Symbol Guide (Paperback)

The PHONETIC SYMBOL GUIDE of Geoffrey K. Pullum and William A. Ladusaw is a quick reference for anyone wishing to see what a given symbol represents in IPA or American Usage. It is easy to use, for it is an a-z listing of symbols, i.e. all symbols which look similar to a given English letter are grouped together, followed by symbols which cannot be placed in alphabetical order. There is a concise glossary of phonetic terms, and finally charts of several methods of transcription.

The work is generally satisfactory, but it is imperfect. In its discussion of IPA the Guide might be seen as historically superseded, for the IPA subsequently released its own official Handbook, which is less easy to use than the work of Pullum and Ladusaw but perhaps more reliable. With regard to other usage, I was disappointed to find that there was no information on the use of certain symbols in Finno-Ugric/Uralic phonetic alphabets. In fact, outside of IPA and American usage there isn't much information. The book may have well ballooned to twice its size if more usage was added, but it would have made the book a much more useful reference.

If one frequently works with American transcriptions of speech, the PHONETIC SYMBOL GUIDE might be an excellent reference to get. People concerned with the IPA should probably simply get the HANDBOOK OF THE INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ASSOCIATION.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This 2nd edition is even better, but..., April 19, 2000

By 

Alberto M. Mioni - See all my reviews

This review is from: Phonetic Symbol Guide (Paperback)

This is a precious and useful reference book. It covers most of history of IPA and of the American usage(s) in transcription, with some minor gaps (e.g., the symbol for dental voiced affricate used by Gleason and Hall, the special use of reversed small capital U in Hockett, etc.). It is a trustworthy guide for the traditions of transcription it covers: I learned a lot about them. Some moot points of the new IPA are duly commented upon and clarified, too. The Continental European tradition, on the contrary, is only cursorily hinted at (e.g., Meillet-Cohen, Slavic linguistics, but not Dialectology and Linguistic Geography, both Romance and Germanic) and so is the tradition of Africanists (Beach and Doke are taken into account, but not, e.g., Guthrie). Being grateful to the authors for the service they paid to the community of linguists and anthropologists, might I hope for a little bit larger coverage in a next edition?

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent reference title, but make sure you have a need, November 24, 2006

By 

W.F. Desvoyelles (Denver/Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Phonetic Symbol Guide (Paperback)

This is a great reference tool for anybody working in Linguistics and Phonetics, simply because Phonetic Notation has varied so much over time. It's gotten me out of tough spots when dealing with Smalley's notation as well as some traditional notation in the description of Native American languages. Similarly, it's vastly useful when reading through the notes of past linguists, whose symbol use is non-conventional at best, and you stumble across a symbol you've never seen and can't find on an IPA chart (I'm looking at you, Barred Lambda).

However, this book is NOT a course in phonetics or in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Picking this book up and reading through it, cover to cover, would be largely useless and downright masochistic, and if you're only working with symbols from the Modern IPA, this book won't be terribly useful. This book is a reference title, not a textbook, so unless you're in the trenches with antiquated or esoteric phonetic symbols on a semi-regular basis, this book might just collect dust on your shelf.

So, for the Phonetician or Linguist who might have a use for it, this book is an incredible resource, but for the new student or casual reader, this book is largely unnecessary.