{"id":469,"date":"2010-05-01T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T08:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=469"},"modified":"2010-03-04T12:14:52","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T10:14:52","slug":"fundamentos-de-fonologia-y-fonetica-espanola-para-hablantes-de-ingles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=469","title":{"rendered":"Fundamentos de fonolog\u00eda y fon\u00e9tica espa\u00f1ola para hablantes de ingl\u00e9s"},"content":{"rendered":"
Fundamentos de fonolog\u00eda y fon\u00e9tica espa\u00f1ola para hablantes de ingl\u00e9s<\/strong>:<\/strong> Manual pr\u00e1ctico de espa\u00f1ol como lengua extranjera. By Eva N\u00fa\u00f1ez M\u00e9ndez<\/strong>. (LINCOM coursebooks in linguistics 13.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2005. Pp. 150. ISBN 9783895869587<\/a>. $75.50.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez<\/strong><\/a>, Florida State University<\/em><\/p>\n

This volume is an introduction to the fundamentals of Spanish phonetics and phonology. It is written in Spanish and intended for native speakers of English with an advanced level of Spanish. Conceived as a practical handbook of Spanish sounds, this book provides a concise presentation of the basic facts of the articulation and phonology in Spanish and its main dialectal variants (v).<\/p>\n

The contents are organized into nine chapters, of which the first three deal with linguistics proper. Ch. 1 (6\u201310) introduces linguistics and its areas of study, and Ch. 2 (11\u201321) focuses on human language and its development as well as animal communication. The first half of Ch. 3 (22\u201332) presents a brief overview of modern linguistics, while the second half deals with language and the brain.<\/p>\n

Chs. 4\u20136 are the core of the book and cover the basics of Spanish phonetics and phonology. Ch. 4 (33\u201350) distinguishes between sounds and letters and introduces the notions of syllable, stress, rhythm, and intonation. Phonemes are the topic of Ch. 5 (51\u201357), which also discusses neutralization and archiphonemes. Ch. 6 (58\u201379) is a straightforward presentation of articulatory phonetics and sound classification.<\/p>\n

Chs. 7 and 8 deal with variation of Spanish sounds. Ch. 7 (80\u201389) considers instances of phonemic and allophonic variation in Spanish, outlines some phonetic and phonological phenomena, and presents pointers and examples of phonetic and phonological transcription. Ch. 8 (90\u2013107) provides a brief history of the development of Spanish and lists the main characteristics of Spanish in Spain, Latin America, and the United States. Ch. 9 (109\u201317) lists a few observations and examples to improve students\u2019 pronunciation of Spanish. The book ends with a list of references, a glossary of linguistic terms, and appendixes on vowels and phonetic alphabets.<\/p>\n

Even though the first three chapters are more general in their scope, overall this book succeeds in providing students with a practical handbook on the basics of Spanish pronunciation and phonology. This book is best suited for undergraduate courses in Spanish phonetics for native speakers of English with no previous background in linguistics. Some chapters (especially 1\u20134, 6, and 8) might also be used in undergraduate introductions to Spanish linguistics.<\/p>\n

This volume is concise, well-organized, and features clear examples and plenty of visual aids that will help the students understand the main points. Every chapter includes exercises targeted for review, discussion, and practice; additionally, Chs. 4\u20136 end with a comparative list between English and Spanish sounds and phonemes. However, it would be helpful to have some discussion of the rationale for transcription and phonetic alphabets, and the concept of archiphonemes should probably be avoided in a book of this type. Furthermore, the inclusion of audio recordings of Spanish sounds (either on a CD-ROM or a website) would have been a welcome addition to this volume.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fundamentos de fonolog\u00eda y fon\u00e9tica espa\u00f1ola para hablantes de ingl\u00e9s: Manual pr\u00e1ctico de espa\u00f1ol como lengua extranjera. By Eva N\u00fa\u00f1ez M\u00e9ndez. (LINCOM coursebooks in linguistics 13.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2005. Pp. 150. ISBN 9783895869587. $75.50. Reviewed by Carolina Gonz\u00e1lez, Florida State University This volume is an introduction to the fundamentals of Spanish phonetics and phonology. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}