Introduction to Phonetics

Introduction to Phonetics

• Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.
• It's concerned with the physical properties of speech, how sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived.
• Phonetics is distinct from phonology, which focuses on the sound systems of language and how sounds function within a language.

Articulatory Phonetics

• This branch focuses on how speech sounds are produced by the vocal tract.
• Key structures include:
  • Lungs, which provide the airflow.
  • Vocal folds (or larynx), which vibrate to create voice.
  • Tongue, lips, and other articulators, which shape the airflow, producing different sounds.
• Articulators can be fixed or movable.
• Description of sounds depends on several aspects including:
  • Manner of articulation: how the airflow is modified, like stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, liquids, glides.
  • Place of articulation: where in the vocal tract the constriction occurs (e.g., bilabial, alveolar, velar).
  • Voicing: whether the vocal folds vibrate (voiced) or not (voiceless).

Acoustic Phonetics

• This field explores the physical properties of sound waves produced during speech.
• Key concepts:
  • Frequency (measured in Hertz): related to pitch.
  • Intensity (measured in decibels): related to loudness.
  • Duration (measured in seconds): length of a sound.
• Spectrograms are graphical representations of the acoustic properties of speech signals over time (often using frequency, intensity & time). Specectrograms analyze the frequencies and intensities of the sound waves. This can be crucial in distinguishing sounds.
• Acoustic analysis provides insights into how speech is produced and perceived.

Auditory Phonetics

• This aspect deals with how humans perceive sounds.
• Our perception of speech relies on the ear’s ability to analyze the acoustic signal, including distinguishing different sounds and frequencies.
• While we perceive what we hear from a acoustic analysis, it’s also influenced by individual characteristics (hearing and perception).

Key Concepts in Phonetics

• Phone: a speech sound.
• Allophone: a variation of a phone.
• Phoneme: an abstract unit of sound that distinguishes meaning in a language. (e.g. /p/ vs /b/).
• Minimal pairs: a pair of words that differ by only one sound.
• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): a standardized system of symbols used to represent all known speech sounds. This makes it easy to represent speech sounds from different languages (and dialects).
• Suprasegmental features: features that affect more than one segment (or sound) in a word, like intonation, stress and juncture.

Phonetic Transcription

• Transcribing speech involves representing sounds using symbols from the IPA.
• Careful transcriptions are vital for accurate analysis and comparison of speech.
• Describing and documenting speech sounds is also key for research and diagnostics. (e.g Speech therapy or language diagnostics).

Speech Production Processes

• Describing the steps involved in articulation.
• Timing (timing analysis) and coordination (describing the order of movement from different muscles used in speech).
• The intricacies in timing (and coordination) are key to speech clarity and perception.

Speech Perception

• The process through which listeners interpret acoustic signals into linguistic representations.
• Perception relies on recognizing speech segments, phonemes, and words.
• The role of context in speech perception.

This quiz covers the fundamentals of phonetics, including the study of speech sounds and their production. Focused on articulatory phonetics, it examines how sounds are created in the vocal tract and the important anatomical structures involved. Test your understanding of the key concepts and terminology related to speech sound production.