LYNNE CAHILL, Discovering phonetics and phonology. London: Red Globe Press, 2019. Pp. xvi + 254. ISBN: 978-1-137-54571-8

Discovering Phonetics and Phonology by Lynne Cahill is an accessible and highly engaging resource for introductory courses in phonetics and phonology. The book covers a variety of topics from articulatory phonetics, the foundational concepts from acoustic phonetics and phonology, and the key terms from morphology that are important for understanding morphophonological processes. There are 14 content chapters that are grouped into six parts. Part I, ‘What is phonetics and why do I need it? ’, focuses on the relationship between spelling and pronunciation (Chapter 1) as well as the reasons for studying phonetics and the main challenges associated with phonetic analysis (Chapter 2). Part II, ‘How to describe and classify sounds’, discusses articulatory and acoustic aspects of consonants (Chapter 3) and vowels (Chapter 4). Part III, ‘Putting sounds together’, looks at syllables (Chapter 5) and morphemes (Chapter 6). Part IV, ‘Rhythm and tune’, covers suprasegmental concepts, including lexical and phrasal stress (Chapter 7), tone and intonation (Chapter 8), and the distinction between phonetic duration and phonological length (Chapter 9). Part V, ‘Phonology’, examines phonological features and sound classes (Chapter 10), the notion of the phoneme and phonemic analysis (Chapter 11), and how phonemic distinctions are affected by neutralization, allomorphy, and the level of abstractness (Chapter 12). Part VI, ‘Phonological theory’, introduces the main types of phonological processes (Chapter 13) and provides a brief overview of the major phonological frameworks, including the Neogrammarian approach and other theories that pre-date the Sound Patterns of English (SPE; Chomsky & Halle 1968), the SPE itself, Autosegmental Phonology, and Optimality Theory (Chapter 14). According to the Preface for teachers (pp. xiii–xiv), the book’s target audience is undergraduate students without prior background in linguistics and it is written with the goal of making the ‘first exposure to phonetics (and a bit of phonology) a bit less threatening than traditional approaches’ (p. xiii). The author focuses primarily on the English language, which makes the book especially easy to understand for those students who are not very familiar with languages other than English. The author also emphasizes the correspondences between spelling and pronunciation in English, so that students can use their existing knowledge of orthography to better understand phonetic and phonological concepts and processes. Discussion on the relationship between sound and spelling in English starts on the very first page of Chapter 1 (p. 3), which helps students understand the mapping between sounds and graphemes and the different types of writing systems, and simultaneously introduces the reader to the idea that both writing and pronunciation can be highly variable. This prepares students for the more advanced phonological concepts presented in later chapters, such as the notions of phoneme and allophone in Chapter 11 (pp. 162–175). In Chapter 5, a section on syllables and orthography (pp. 91–93) helps students better understand not only syllabic writing systems but also the concepts of ambisyllabicity and sonority. In Chapter 11, discussion of the differences between upperand lower-case graphemes (pp. 162–163) serves as an introduction to the concept of the phoneme. Another major strength of the book is in how it engages students. The author talks directly to the reader and each chapter contains ‘quick quizzes’ that start an initial conversation about the concepts introduced in the chapter. Quick quiz questions are always simple yet thought-provoking, with detailed answers given in the chapter itself. Chapter 1, for example,