"…the detailed information that is densely packed into this quite short text will be appreciated by many phoneticians, who will find it an exceptionally useful summary of the processes that affect conversational speech and the contexts under which they are most likely to occur." (Journal of the International Phonetic Association)

"This is an excellent book that gives a true account of what English speech is really like."
—Gerry Knowles, University of Lancaster

"Linda Shockey addresses questions of interest to nearly every phonetician and phonologist, providing extensive examples of attested conversational reductions in numerous dialects of English. By presenting the reductions along with their linguistic conditioning factors, she strikes a forceful blow against the belief that casual speech is simply sloppy speech. Sound Patterns of Spoken English will be of interest to theoretical phonologists and experimental phoneticians, as well as researchers in speech perception, language acquisition and speech technology."
—Lisa Lavoie, Massachusetts Institute of Technology