Phonetics

Phonetics is a part of linguistics that looks at how we make and understand speech sounds. It studies how our mouths shape sounds, how these sounds travel through the air, and how our ears and brains pick them up. This area has three main parts: articulatory phonetics, which looks at how we physically make sounds; acoustic phonetics, which studies the sound waves that move between people; and auditory phonetics, which looks at how we hear and understand these sounds. People who study phonetics are called phoneticians.

Phonetics is important because it helps us learn about how different languages work, including sign languages like American Sign Language and Australian Sign Language. While spoken languages such as English use sounds made with the mouth and heard with the ears, sign languages use hand movements seen with the eyes. Some sign languages even have special ways for people who are both deaf and blind to communicate, using hand movements that are both made and felt with the hands, called tactile signing. This shows how phonetics looks at many ways humans talk to each other.

History

The study of phonetics began a long time ago. Around the 6th century BCE, scholars from Sanskrit started learning how sounds are made. One famous scholar, Pāṇini, wrote about sounds, like the difference between tones and noises.

Later, in the 1800s, people studied phonetics more closely. They used new tools to record sounds and found ways to write down speech sounds clearly. This helped teachers, especially those who worked with deaf children, understand and teach speech better.

Production

Main article: Language production

Language production is how we turn thoughts into spoken or signed words. It starts with picking words that match what we want to say. These words carry meaning and grammatical information.

Next, we plan how to say the words using sounds called phonemes. These sounds are made by moving parts of our mouth in special ways, like closing lips or moving the tongue. Finally, muscles move to create the sounds we hear in speech. This process goes from idea to planned words to sound.

Place of articulation

Sounds we make when speaking are called consonants. They are made by closing parts of our vocal tract, usually the mouth, in different ways. The place where we make these sounds changes what we hear. For example, the "f" in "fought" uses the lips, while the "th" in "thought" uses the tongue.

We can make sounds using different parts of the tongue: the front (coronal), the back (dorsal), or deep in the throat (radical). Each part helps create unique sounds. For instance, English has many sounds made with the front of the tongue, like "s" and "sh."

Acoustics

Speech sounds are made when the airstream is changed by parts of the mouth, like the tongue and lips. These parts shape the airstream to make different sounds. For example, words like tack and sack start with similar sounds but differ in how the tongue is positioned.

One feature of speech sounds is whether they are voiced. Voiced sounds are made when the vocal folds in the throat vibrate. This vibration creates a special sound. Many sounds can be made with or without this vibration. The way the vocal folds vibrate can also change the pitch of the sound, which is important in some languages.

Perception

Main article: Speech perception

Language perception is how we understand spoken words. When we hear someone talking, our brains break the sounds into smaller parts like individual sounds and whole words. We pay attention to certain sound features that help us tell these parts apart, even though many details in the sound can change.

Hearing begins when sound waves enter our ears and make the eardrum move. These movements travel through small bones to a spiral-shaped tube in the ear called the cochlea. Inside the cochlea, special cells change the movements into signals that go to the brain. This helps us recognize different pitches and sounds.

Besides individual sounds, phonetics also looks at larger parts of speech like syllables and phrases. These have features such as pitch, speed, and loudness that help give meaning and feeling to what we say. Different languages use these features in various ways to show importance or tone.

Subdisciplines

Main article: Acoustic phonetics Main article: Articulatory phonetics Main article: Auditory phonetics

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and how we make, hear, and understand them. There are three main areas of phonetics. Acoustic phonetics looks at the sound waves created when we speak. Articulatory phonetics focuses on how we shape our mouths to create different sounds. Auditory phonetics explores how our ears and brains process these sounds, helping us understand spoken language.

Describing sounds

Human languages use many different sounds. Linguists describe these sounds in ways that work for any language. We can describe sounds by how we move our mouths to make them. For example, we have consonants. These are sounds made by closing or partly closing the mouth. We also have vowels. Vowels are sounds made without any blockage in the mouth.

We can also describe sounds by how they sound. This is linked to how we make them with our mouths. Tools like the International Phonetic Alphabet help us write down these sounds using special symbols. For sign languages, there are different systems to describe hand shapes and movements.

Sign languages

Unlike spoken languages, sign languages are read with the eyes instead of heard with the ears. Signs are made using the hands, upper body, and head. The hands and arms are the main parts used. Movements close to the body are called proximal, and movements farther away are distal. Signs near the face let us see very small differences in finger movement.

Sign languages use both hands. Signers can choose which hand to use easily. When both hands are used, they often move in the same way. One hand may stay still while the other moves. Sometimes, one hand may be dropped during relaxed talks. Just like in spoken languages, signs can change each other, such as making handshapes more similar to nearby signs.

Main article: Sign language