Reviewed by Anish Koshy, The English and Foreign Languages University, India

This volume contains twenty-two chapters organized into five major sections. It sees the addition of ten new chapters while the organizational scheme of the first edition is retained.

Part 1, ‘Experimental phonetics’, has four chapters. Maureen Stone gives an overview of the role of laboratory instruments in the study of speech disorders and speech processing applications. While Christine H. Shadle considers various aerodynamically distinct oral tract behaviors and the methods of measuring them, Hajime Hirose studies the functions of laryngeal structures and the basic laryngeal adjustments required for different phonetic conditions. Jonathan Harrington takes up a detailed analysis of the acoustic characteristics of three major categories of sounds.

Part 2, ‘Biological perspectives’, has three chapters. Janet Mackenzie Beck explores organic variation in speech performance due to differences in shape and proportion of vocal organs. Hermann Ackermann and Wolfram Ziegler review characteristics of primate and human brains with reference to human language. Anne Smith discusses neural processes and issues of interface, the role of feedback, and neuroplasticity.

Part 3, ‘Modelling speech production and perception’, is the largest section in the handbook. Barbara L. Davis gives an overview of the formalist, structuralist, cognitive science, and auditory-perceptual perspectives on speech acquisition. Edda Farnetani and Daniel Recasens explore coarticulation and connected speech processes from various theoretical perspectives. Anders Löfqvist discusses the problems of coordination and motor control in motor systems in speech production. Christer Gobl and Ailbhe Ní Chasaide deal with acoustic aspects of phonation and its exploitation in the context of speech communication. Kenneth N. Stevens and Helen M. Hanson review the quantal/enhancement theory and its relationship to the notion of distinctive features. Brian C. J. Moore introduces aspects of auditory processing. James M. McQueen and Anne Cutler conclude this section by focusing on the cognitive aspects of speech perception in terms of lexical and pre-lexical processing.

Part 4, ‘Linguistic phonetics’, has five chapters. Janet Fletcher reviews temporal aspects of prosody and the rhythmic dimension of speech. Mary E. Beckman and Jennifer J. Venditti discuss functional aspects and establish parameters with which to study pitch change. John J. Ohala reviews the historical evolution of phonetics and phonology, and argues for an integration of the two fields. Tracing the development of the international phonetic alphabet notation, John H. Esling presents important challenges and revisions to the system. Paul Foulkes, James M. Scobbie, and Dominic Watt explore sociophonetics by seeking to explain socially structured variation in speech.

Part 5, ‘Speech technology’, has three chapters. Daniel P. W. Ellis discusses sound-filtering and the Fourier analysis and spectrographic representation of speech signal. Rolf Carlson and Björn Granström survey text-to-speech synthesizing systems, discussing current trends like multimodal and multilingual synthesis. Steve Renals and Simon King conclude this section by reviewing techniques, models, and algorithms used in automatic speech recognition research.

This volume succeeds in maintaining its multidisciplinary orientation with exhaustive discussions of current techniques, experimental approaches, and theories used in the various sub-fields, while also standing as a testimony to the highly productive and ever-expanding nature of the discipline.