Joaquín Romero and María Riera The Phonetics-Phonology Interface. Representations and methodologies

The Phonetics-Phonology Interface offers an overview of experimental research on the segmental and prosodic aspects of speech production and perception. As noted by the volume editors, prosody and its interplay with segments are often underrepresented in phonological studies, and there has been a tendency in the literature to keep the two topics apart (see, e.g., Kohler, 2012). This may be due to the fact that prosody typically involves constituents higher than single lexical items. Thus, it inevitably touches on other modules of grammar, such as syntax and semantics/pragmatics. Intonation, voice quality and rhythm are properties of sentences and often depend not only on sentence structure, but also on the attitudes, emotions, moods or identity of the speaker, the communicative situation and other extralinguistic factors. Meanwhile, phonologists prefer to focus on speaker-independent, lower-level constituents that do not go beyond single lexical items. Consequently, the study of prosody grew apart as a subdiscipline in its own right. Since many of the phonological and phonetic phenomena are nevertheless intertwined not only at the level of the segment, but also at the suprasegmental level, there is a need to reunite the two branches of research. This is rightfully acknowledged by the editors of this volume. It is also in accordance with the tenets of prosodic phonology (Nespor & Vogel, 1986; Selkirk, 1986) as well as with the works on the phonetics-phonology and prosody-phonetics interfaces (Cho, 2011, 2016; Fletcher, 2010; Kingston, 2007; Scobbie, 2012). The book under review is the result of an initiative that emerged from the conference series Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia (PAPI), whose focus is mainly on laboratory speech sciences. The editors hope that the volume will encourage researchers to further delve into the issues related to the interrelations of phonetics and phonology from a more focused, experimental and quantitative rather than purely theoretical perspective. In this context, the volume is to serve as a resource for those who seek methodological inspiration in their studies of intonation, rhythm and segmental processes. The volume consists of four sections, each encompassing either three or four chapters, preceded by an introductory chapter. The chapters of the four sections are organised thematically around particular issues: (1) First and Second Language Acquisition, (2) Prosody, (3) Segments, and (4) Methodology. The last section is followed by a subject index. Most of the contributions concern the Romance language family, but there are also important works concerning other, unrelated languages. The chapters included in the volume’s first section on language acquisition deal with both adults and infants. Catherine Best’s chapter focuses on perception and argues that phonetic detail is not dismissed in language acquisition in favour of phonological categories. Rather, it plays an important supporting role in recognising lexical items and learning phonological patterns. According to her overview, attending to a wide range of variable and gradient features Published online: May 2, 2019