Navajo Sound System

This book is a phonetic fieldwork study of the sound system of an important Native American language. It is one of the few monograph-length phonetic investigations of an indigenous North American language. As the field of typological studies grows, it is evident that the languages of the Americas have to be included in order to obtain a complete picture of natural human language, especially since the American Indian languages show significantly different typological features. The Navajo Sound System: provides a baseline description of the phonetics of the Navajo language, as it is spoken on the Navajo reservation today; is based on an instrumental analysis of recordings collected from native speakers; is important to classroom education (language instruction) and clinical (speech pathology and audiology) settings; helps broaden our knowledge of sound systems beyond the range of English and more well studied languages; is a complement to the seminal Young and Morgan grammars and dictionaries of Navajo language. "The Navajo Sound System" is for researchers, students, fieldworkers and educators working in the fields of general and theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, (laboratory) phonetics and phonology, morphology, Native American Indian studies (Athabaskan and Navajo studies) and language revitalization programmes.