Book excerpt: Volume 2 of the most up-to-date and comprehensive description of the Spanish language’s phonetic and phonological system Though there has been considerable research on Spanish phonetics and phonology, until now, there has been no in-depth and complete descriptive reference work. Fonética y fonología descriptivas de la lengua española, volumes 1 and 2, are a comprehensive reference, written in Spanish, describing the phonetics and phonology of Spanish. Edited by Juana Gil and Joaquim Llisterri and including contributions from an international group of scholars, these books provide a comprehensive overview for understanding topics across Spanish phonetics and phonology, making clear what further research is needed. Together, these volumes offer a survey of Spanish descriptive phonetics and phonology. Volume 2 focuses on the suprasegmental properties on the suprasegmental properties of speech such as word stress, intonation, speaking rate, pauses and rhythm. The topics are examined from different angles: their phonetic description, their phonological analysis, their variation, and also their function in speech. Intonation, in particular, is also studied from the point of view of pragmatics, discourse and conversation analysis. With state-of-the-art information on all topics related to the sounds of Spanish, Fonética y fonología descriptivas de la lengua española will be a valuable resource for researchers, students, and scholars of Spanish linguistics who wish to deepen their understanding of the phonetic and phonological characteristics of all the varieties of the Spanish language.