Štefan Beňuš - Investigating Spoken English A Practical Guide to Phonetics and Phonology Using Praat

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This book draws heavily on my understanding of human speech and the cognitive system of phonetics-phonology that underlies it when applied to English. There have been numerous fellow academics working on speech who sparked my curiosity and provided inspiration, guidance, expertise, or a friendly ear over the course of its development. Additionally, many students at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia, mostly unknowingly, helped identify and fix dead ends, sharpen the focus or the pedagogical approach. I am deeply grateful to all of them.

In addition to all the unnamed above, let me also express my gratitude to the following people. Adamantios Gafos was my teacher and advisor at New York University and he has been pivotal in my interest and basic views regarding phonetic, phonology, and their relationship. I am indebted to the entire faculty and fellow students in the NYU department of Linguistics for great formatting five years of graduate school. I was also incredibly lucky to have Julia Hirschberg as a remarkable and caring post-doc supervisor and eventually a colleague in prosody research. I benefited enormously also from interactions with the members of Julias Spoken Language Processing group at Columbia University, especially Agustn Gravano, Rivka Levitan, Frank Enos, and Andrew Rosenberg. Juraj imko, Katalin Mdy and Uwe Reichel selflessly endured and commented on drafts of my text and also kindly shared time while hiking, doing manual labour, or over beer/wine for many exciting discussions regarding prosody or speech in general.

I am also thankful to my colleagues in the department of English and American studies at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra and the department of speech analysis and synthesis in the Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, who have kept very open and supportive atmosphere over the years.

Lisa Davidsons lecture slides and Adrian Underhills workshop provided various inspirations for my teaching. Pter Siptr, Katri Hiovain, and Heini Kallio commented on drafts of some chapters of the books. Marcos Perez generously donated his time and voice for some of the recordings. The manuscript benefitted greatly also from feedback and comments of three anonymous reviewers and invaluable help provided by the editorial team.

My son Matej patiently read and edited the entire first draft of the book and my entire family provided much needed mental life support in the process of writing and beyond.

Thank you!