The overall aim of the book is to provide an integrated view of the separate stages of the speech chain, covering the production process, speech data analysis and speech perception. Analysis of information bearing elements of the speech signal have found applications in linguistic theory and in the knowledge base of speech technology with special reference to speech synthesis.

The book contains 19 selected articles organized in 6 chapters:

• Speech research overview with a historical outline,
• Speech production and synthesis,
• The voice source,
• Speech analysis and features,
• Speech perception,
• Prosody.

Each chapter is preceded by an introduction including suggestions for additional reading. (7) A list of all publications of the author since 1945 is included. It is supplemented by an ordering in categories. The articles have been selected to ensure a representative coverage of the field. Some of them, primarily those on speech acoustics and the human voice source were published earlier.