Phonetics as a Science

Lecture 1

Phonetic as a branch of linguistics studies sounds in the broad sense, comprising segmental sounds (vowel and consonants) and prosodic phenomena (pitch, stress, tempo, rhythm, pauses etc.).

Phonetics as a science is a branch of linguistics. Being a science in its own right, it is at the same time closely connected with other linguistic sciences – grammar, lexicology, stylistics, history of the language, since the phonetic system of a language, its vocabulary and grammar constitute one indivisible whole. It is also closely interconnected with physiology, biology, physics, pedagogy, psychology, mathematics, cybernetics.

Phonetics has a long history. It was known to the ancient Greeks and Hindus. But as a science in its own right it began to develop in Russia and in Western Europe only in the second half of the 19^th century. The term “phonic”, “phonetics” comes from the Greek “phone” – sound.

Being created by the speaker, the sound medium indicates the speaker`s personality (sex, age, individual features) and it reveals his physiological and emotional state, geographical origin, education, social status and so on.

Every act of speech presupposes the presence of a person who speaks and a person who listens. The speaker produces sounds, the sounds travel through the air to the listener in the form of complex combinations of sound waves, the listener hears and interprets them.

Communication is possible only because the speaker and the listener interpret the same language.

Consequently, sound phenomena have different aspects, which are closely interconnected: the articulatory aspect, the acoustic, the auditory linguistic aspects.

System of Sound Units

Articulation Perception

Sound Waves

The articulatory (sound-production) aspect. Speech sounds are products of human organs of speech. They result from the activities of the diaphragm, the lungs, the vocal cords etc. The air stream coming from the lungs undergoes important modifications. We usually classify speech sounds according to different modifications of the air system.

The acoustic aspect.

Any sound of nature exists in the form of sound waves and has the same physical properties – frequency, intensity, duration and spectrum.

The vocal cords vibrate in such a way that they produce various kinds of waves simultaneously. The basic vibrations of the vocal cords over their whole length produce the fundamental tone of voice. The simultaneous vibrations of each part of the vocal cords produce partial tones (overtones or harmonics).

The number of vibrations per second is called frequency, which is measured in hertz. The fundamental frequency determines the pitch of the voice and forms an acoustic basis of speech melody.

Intensity of speech sounds depends on the amplitude of vibrations. Changes in intensity are associated with stress in those languages which have dynamic stress. Intensity is measured in decibels.

Any sound has a certain duration. The duration of a sound is often referred to as its quantity. The duration of sounds is measured in milliseconds (ms).

The auditory (sound perception) aspect.

Speech sounds may also be analyzed from the point of view of perception. The perception of speech sounds involves the activity of our hearing mechanism, which can be viewed in two ways.

On the one hand, it is a physiological mechanism, which reacts to acoustic stimuli. The human ear transforms mechanical vibrations of the air into nervous stimuli and transmits them to the brain. The listener hears the acoustic features of fundamental frequency, intensity and duration in terms of four perceptible categories of pitch, quality, loudness and length.

On the other hand, it is also a psychological mechanism which selects from the great amount of acoustic information only that which is linguistically significant.

Theoretical phonetics is subdivided into four main branches:

1. Articulatory phonetics is concerned with the study of sound as a result of the activities of speech organs: respiration, voice production, articulation and the mental processes necessary for the mastery of a phonetic system. Methods employed in articulating phonetics are experimental. They involve palatography, laryngoscopy, photography, cinematography. Besides, articulatory phonetics uses its oldest subjective method – the method of direct observation.

2. Receptual (auditory) phonetics occupies itself with the study of man’s perception of segmental sounds, pitch variation loudness and duration. The methods used in perceptual phonetics are also experimental. They include various kinds of auditory tests. Since sound production and sound perception are physiological processes articulatory and perceptual phonetics are generally termed physiological phonetics.

3. Acoustic phonetics is concerned with the acoustic aspect of speech sounds. It studies speech sounds with the help of experimental (instrumental) methods. Various kinds of apparatus are applied for analyzing the acoustic structure of segmental sounds and prosodic phenomena: spectrograph, oscillograph and intonograph to analyze frequency, intensity and duration.

4. Phonology or functional phonetics is a purely linguistic branch of phonetics. It deals with the functional aspect of sound phenomena. Phonology sets out to discover those segmental and prosodic features that have a differential value in a language. Phonology of segmental units is often called phonetics and phonology of intonation (prosody) is termed intonology.

All the above branches of phonetics are closely connected.

Lecture 2

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