ABSTRACT

American English Phonetic Transcription provides an accessible introduction to phonemic, phonetic, and intonational transcription with a focus on American English. Featuring exercises, revision tasks, and recordings to help students gain hands-on practice, the book takes a learning-by-doing approach and ensures students gain practice using each new symbol or concept introduced before moving on to the next. Consisting of three parts, the book covers:

  • transcribing individual words, including consonants, vowels, primary stress, secondary stress, syllabic consonants, and inflections;
  • transcribing phrases and sentences, including weak forms, elision, and assimilation;
  • transcribing intonation, including the structure of English intonation and recognizing pitch patterns.

Ideally suited as a standalone workbook or for use alongside British English Phonetic Transcription, American English Phonetic Transcription is key reading for undergraduate students of linguistics as well as anyone teaching or learning English as a foreign language.

part A|61 pages

Transcribing words

chapter 4|5 pages

The fleece /i/ and the goose /u/ vowels

chapter 7|3 pages

The goat /oʊ/ and mouth /aʊ/ vowels

chapter 8|2 pages

FLEECE /i/ and goose /u/ before /r/

chapter 9|6 pages

Syllabic consonants

chapter 10|9 pages

Secondary stress

chapter 11|7 pages

Inflections and epenthesis

part B|48 pages

Transcribing connected speech

chapter 12|3 pages

Connected speech and liaison

chapter 13|16 pages

Stress and weak forms

chapter 14|7 pages

Elision

chapter 15|14 pages

Assimilation

chapter 16|6 pages

Connected speech

Extended practice

part C|22 pages

Transcribing intonation

chapter 17|4 pages

An introduction to intonation

chapter 18|6 pages

Nucleus and tail

chapter 19|6 pages

Head and pre-head

chapter 20|4 pages

Intonation

Extended practice