The Gift of Speech : Papers in the Analysis of Speech and Voice

John Laver’s significance in the study of speech is well-founded and internationally recognised. In these collected papers he explores two themes fundamental to his work - how the brain plans, controls, monitors and edits its programs for speech, and how the quality of a speaker’s voice can be described. The articles have been taken from a wide variety of books and journals, some of which are difficult to get hold of. Four of the essays have never been published. As well as examining what makes one speaker’s voice different from another's, they explore the different sorts of information about the speaker that can be conveyed by the voice, and how voice pathology can be scientifically assessed. Two papers on the history of voice analysis from Cicero to the present are also included.