linguistics

• Phonetics is the science of the sound systems of natural languages
• Phonetics


  • It is not only used as a tool in linguistics and foreign language teaching, but it is also included in departments of physics and telecommunications
  • It describes and classifies in a scientific way all the sounds found in human language
• Life of a sound

  1. Generation

  2. Transmission

  3. Reception
• Generation


  The actual physical production of speech sounds
• Transmission


  The air carries the sound to the human ear
• Reception


  The ear receives the sounds and passes them to the brain which then interprets the signal
• Sounds have physical qualities and are concrete entities that can be recorded
• The linguist is interested only in the sounds produced by the human speech organs, that is, in the sounds which occur in language or which play a role in human language and communication
• Branches of phonetics


  • Articulatory phonetics
  • Acoustic phonetics
  • Auditory phonetics
• Articulatory phonetics


  Concerns itself with the causation of speech sounds, that is, the actual production of speech sounds which results from the manipulation of certain speech organs
• Individual differences in the physical quality of speech organs have no influence on the type of the sounds which are produced
• Acoustic phonetics


  Deals with the description of speech sounds as physical entities in terms of the way they are heard
• Auditory phonetics


  Investigates speech sounds in the manner they are heard or perceived by the hearer
• Articulatory and auditory phonetics belong to the domain of physiology, but are used for linguistic purposes. Acoustic phonetics is usually considered as a subpart of physics, but it is employed in the study of speech sounds
• Articulatory and acoustic phonetics provide detailed descriptions and accurate findings about speech sounds, while auditory phonetics is the least elaborate branch of phonetics
• There are no two speakers who utter the same sound in exactly the same way, and an individual never pronounces the same sound twice in an identical manner
• The purpose of phonetics is to describe and classify the sound properties and sound differences which make the speakers of a language communicate with each other
• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)


  A standardized and internationally used system of phonetic representation, based on the principle of assigning a distinct letter or symbol to each individual or distinguishable speech sound
• The IPA cannot describe all possible human speech sounds, as there is no limit to the speech sounds that human beings can make
• Broad transcription


  Gives less phonetic detail than narrow transcription
• Narrow transcription


  Requires more phonetic detail than broad transcription
• LEVEL TONES

  • Pharyngealized
  • Lateral release
  • No audible release
• Pitch


  • Extra-high
  • High
  • Mid
  • Low
• CONTOUR TONES


  • Rise
  • Fall
  • Rise fall
• Consonant types


  • Fricative
  • Lateral fricative
  • Nasal
  • Lateral
  • Plosive
• Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel
• The phonetic transcription of vowels is more difficult than that of consonants because of the wide range of English varieties that are spoken all over the world
• Dialects are generally different in terms of the vowels rather than in terms of the consonants they use
• The IPA cannot represent all the non-essential distinctions, because these distinctions are too varied to be symbolized
• If a t, p or k occurs initially in an English word, it is accompanied by a puff of air referred to as aspiration
• Aspirated sounds are transcribed with a little h (diacritic) above the letter-symbol
• There are other phonetic representations or alphabets besides the IPA that have been designed and adopted because most of their symbols can be typed on a typewriter
• There are actually more differences in the transcription of vowels than in the transcription of consonants between the IPA and the phonetic alphabet used by most textbooks in America
• Neither the IPA nor any other phonetic alphabet includes all the symbols needed to represent the speech sounds of all the languages of the world
• Different books on phonetics make use of different styles of phonetic transcription mainly because different forms of transcription are more convenient in one circumstance than in another
• One should not mix phonetic alphabets in a specific phonetic transcription
• Phonetic transcriptions are usually put between square brackets
• One must not apply one's interpretation of particular symbols to particular speech sounds or even to words in a given language
• We do not say that a particular sound ought to be produced in such and such a way, but we transcribe it faithfully, that is, exactly as it is pronounced by a given speaker
• Italics in normal orthography

  Linguistic forms may be given without any brackets