Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics. It studies different sounds of speech, their production, reception, transmission, classification, transcription and analysis. It also deals with the representation of speech with written symbols. A phonetician is a linguist person who specialised in phonetics. In any kind of language, there are a small number of sounds that are regularly used known as phonemes (mostly called vowels and consonants). Phonetics mainly deals with the physiological production of speech sounds and acoustic qualities.
Earlier, phonetician used their ears, eyes and their vocal organs awareness for studying pronunciation but recently instruments have been used to study the information derived from their own sensations. This type of investigation of speech using instruments is called experimental phonetics.
While studying phonetics, one deals with the configurations of the vocal tract that is used for the production of articulatory phonetics, the acoustic properties of sound and the manner in which different sounds are combined to produce a defined syllabus, words or sentences. Phonetics mainly undergo two aspects of speech: the way a human being makes sound and the second is perception, how the sound is perceived by others. Sign languages also use phonetics for a better understanding of sound. In languages such as ASL (American Sign Language) and Auslan (Australian Sign Language), speech is produced manually (using gestures and hands) and perceived visually (using eyes).
Linguistic signals are understood and decoded by the listener by the process of language perception. The acoustic signals coming continuously should be converted into linguistic units known as morphemes, phenomes and words in order to perceive speech. To correctly categorize and identify various sounds, certain aspects of signals are prioritized over others by the listeners.
Three main branches of modern phonetics:
- Acoustic phonetics: It deals with the acoustic results made by different articulations.
- Articulatory phonetic: It deals with the way in which sounds are made by using articulators.
- Auditory phonetics: It deals with how the listeners understand the signals and perceive the sounds.
The very first studies on phonetics is conducted by Sanskrit Grammarians in the 6th century BC. Rishi Panini, the Hindu scholar is most popular for his contribution in this field and had a huge influence on modern linguistics. After that came Roman and Greek grammarians which shifted the earlier focus of distinguishing between written and spoken language to now entirely focusing on physical properties of speech.
The process of production of sound from a mere message can be grouped into the following sequence:
- Planning the message
- Lemma selection
- Retrieving and assigning phonological word forms
- Specifying articulations
- Commanding the muscles
- Articulation
- Speech sounds