Review of "Phonetic Data Analysis" by Peter Ladefoged

Abstract

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2006) Review of “Phonetic Data Analysis” by Peter Ladefoged. Keith Johnson Department of Linguistics UC Berkeley “Old people can be hard to control” (PDA, p. 14). “Phonetic Data Analysis” (PDA) is a course book for instrumental or field phonetics courses and like Ladefoged’s other major textbook “A Course in Phonetics” defines not only (or primarily) the content of the course but also a set of attitudes for doing successful phonetic research. This book is important because Peter Ladefoged, more than any other person in the 20th century, defined the linguistic/phonetic curriculum, and a large swath of the phonetics research agenda in linguistics. Ladefoged’s choices for the content of PDA were guided by his view of the aims of phonetic field work. For him the chief aim of phonetic field work is language description at a segmental phonetic level, with particular focus on unusual or rare sounds that challenge one’s view of what sounds are possible in language. This aim leads to a focus on discovering what exactly the speakers of a language do with their mouths, vocal folds, and lungs in order to pronounce the words of their language. As he discusses in this book, the instrumental tools that are necessary to achieve this aim are primarily based in acoustic speech analysis (spectrograms especially) with some supplemental physiological techniques for observing consonant place of articulation and consonant aerodynamics. Thus, PDA is a practical book about how to discover patterns of consonant and vowel pronunciation using simple phonetic instruments that can be packed in suit case. This is the second of the widely imitated three-course phonetics curriculum that Ladefoged helped to