Understanding Phonology, third edition

Carlos Gussenhoven and Haike Jacobs

There are about 6000 languages in the world today. Almost certainly, no two of them
have the same sound structure: they vary widely in the number of consonants and
vowels they have, in their use of tonal contrasts, in their stress patterns, in the shape
of their syllables, and so on. At the same time, all these languages show striking
similarities in the way they structure their sound systems. Phonology is a thriving field
of linguistic research that strives to understand the structure behind these systems.
How do these similarities arise? Or again, why is there so much variation? How is our
knowledge of the pronunciation of our language represented in our brain? How can we
describe the pronunciation of a language? What do people do when they play language
games? Why do loanwords often sound so totally different from the way they are
pronounced in the donor languages? These and many other questions are dealt with
in this book.
Hodder Education