INTRODUCTION Phonetics and Phonology Are Concerned with The

& Introduction 33 There are three main dimensions to phonetics: articulatory phonetiCS, acoustic phonetics, and auditory phonetiCS. These correspond to the production, transmission, and reception of sound. (i) Articulatory phonetics This is concerned with studying the processes by which we actually make, or articulate, speech sounds. It's probably the aspect of phonetics that students of linguistiCS encounter first, and arguably the most acces sible to non-specialists since it doesn't involve the use of complicated machines. The organs that are employed in the articulation of speech INTRODUCTION sounds the tongue, teeth, lips, lungs and so on - all have more basic biological functions as they are part of the respiratory and digestive Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the study of speech systems of our bodies. Humans are unique in using these biological more particularly, with the dependence of speech on sound. In order to organs for the purpose of articulating speech sounds. Speech is formed understand the distinction between these two terms it is important to a stream of air coming up from the lungs through the glottis into the grasp the fact that sound is both a physical and a mental phenomenon. mouth or nasal cavities and being expelled through the lips or nose. It's Both speaking and hearing involve the performance of certain physical the modifications we make to this stream of air with organs normally functions, either with the organs in our mouths or with those in our ears. used for breathing and eating that produce sounds. The principal organs At the same time, however, neither speaking nOr hearing are simply used in the production of are shown in Figure 6. mechanical, neutral processes. We endow the sounds we make and Whereas acoustic phonetics describes speech sounds in terms of their hear with meaning. They have a mental or cognitive existence as well as relative frequencies, articulatory phonetics describes them in terms of a physical one. Another way of putting this is to say that sounds are the particular organs that are involved in their production. Sounds like psychologically, as well as physically, real. Psychological reality is Ibl and Ipl (bit and pit) that involve the lips are 'labial' sounds, and those important in linguistics. Sometimes things can be psychologically real which involve the teeth, such as lei and 101 (thigh and thy) are described without having any real-world correlates. So, for example, most people as 'dental'. more information on this, see PLACE OF ARTICULATION.) will idealise their own speech and hear themselves speaking perfectly Not only do speech sounds differ from each other in their place of artic clearly and accent-neutral, when in fact the reverse is the case. ulation but they also differ in the way, or manner, in which they are This division between the physical and mental dimensions of speech articulated. In producing fbi and fp/, for example, the lips come together sounds is reflected in the terms 'phonetics' and 'phonology'. PreCisely and air is released in a mini explosion - these sounds are 'plosives'; where the division comes has been, and still is, a matter of fierce debate whilst in the case of lei and 101 the tongue touches the top teeth and air between phoneticians and phonologists. No phonetician would say that is released continuously with friction - these sounds are 'fricatives' (for s/he simply studies the way in which speech sounds are physically more information see MANNER OF ARTICULATION). Using articulation produced, transmitted or received, and phonologists would not restrict features to describe speech sounds has a number of advantages. To themselves to the way we construct mental shapes from sounds, but begin with it's very easy to distinguish between CONSONANT and VOWEL none the less there is a broad difference in their approach. Phonetics is sounds, since consonants characteristically restrict the air flow in some really a technically based subject concerned with measuring sound, way as a consequence of contact between the speech organs, whereas recording frequencies, and generally stUdying the physiology of speech. vowels do not. In addition, it's possible, by combining manner and place PhonolOgy, on the other hand, is essentially preoccupied with sound of articulation together with VOICE, to give a precise description of each as a system for carrying meaning. Its fundamental concern is with distinctive sound. Articulatory phonetics has been particularly identifYing PHONEMES. These are the small building blocks of the powerful in recent years in providing a descriptive framework for speech spoken language that provide the skeleton framework of speech. sounds that can be used by linguists across the discipline. They are part of the mental blueprint that native users carry in their heads. 32 ".::""~;J 34 Phonetics and Phonology In t ro d u c t ion 35 Much more interestingly, however, it is also possible to measure the frequency of individual speech sounds, both vowels and consonants, and show that they have their own distinctive resonance. If you imagine that the vocal tract is a bit like an organ pipe, then what speech organs, such as the tongue, the lips and the teeth, do is to alter the length and Sfi shape of the pipe by interfering with the flow of sound, much after the manner of a musical instrument. As a consequence, the frequency of the sounds we make is continually changing. Phoneticians use a specto graph, a machine designed to analyse/decompose sound into its acoustic parameters, to capture the fluctuating frequency of speech. This produces a spectogram, a kind of chart that shows frequency in terms of relative degrees of light and dark. On the basis of these kinds of exper iments phoneticians can establish the acoustic structure of speech and demonstrate the distinctiveness of particular segments. (iii) Auditory phonetics This is the branch of phonetics that is concerned with the perception of speech sounds, i.e. how they are heard. Phonetic:ians working in this area study the physical ways in which the sound pressure waves we create by speaking are converted into meaningful units of speech. Part of this involves knowing something about the structure of the ear and L Lips: labial the processes by which sound is carried along the nervous system to the T Teeth: dental A Alveolar ridge: alveolar E Epig lottis brain. In simple terms, what happens is that the outer ear collects the HP Hard palate: palatal VC Vocal cords sounds from the world around us, the middle ear amplifies them and SP Soft palate: velar W Windpipe passes them to the inner ear where the impulses are relayed to the U Uvula: uvular N Nasal passage: nasal auditory nerve, a kind of fibre optic cable, and onwards to the speech centres in the brain. At various stages the sounds are processed into G Glottis: glottal ~; linguistic units and ultimately into items of meaning. The areas of the ~ ~. brain considered to be most important in the processing of language are Figure 6 The organs of speech j Wernicke's area and Broca's area, both of which are usually located I in the left hemisphere in right-handed people. ~ Because of its link with perception, auditory phonetics has been very ~ ~ (ii) Acoustic phonetics prominent in research into how the brain interprets sound linguistically. f Phonetic units in a word are not strung together like beads on a string. ~ This is concerned with studying the properties of sound as a conse ~ quence of variations in air pressure. When we speak we disturb the When we hear the sounds in cat, for example, we don't process the molecules in the air around us. These molecules oscillate, that is, they sounds individually and add them together. We hear them as a mean move back and forth rather like the swing of a pendulum. Each complete ingful sequence. The sounds are smeared across each other. The 'c' I movement back and forward is called a cycle. Phoneticians plot these runs into the 'a', which runs into the 't'. This process is known as COAR , cycles using instruments to arrive at the particular frequency of a TICULATlON. The question that phoneticians ask, then, is 'how is it, given sound. The more cycles that occur in a second the higher the frequency. this smearing, that we can reconstruct as hearers the underlying word?' •~ A number of theories have been advanced to account for this but no • Using this kind of measurement it is possible to show that on average Ip the frequency of a woman's voice is twice that of a man's. single theory has been entirely successful in accounting for all aspects ~~-.'~~--"'.- '--':'1. 36 Phonetics and Phonology In trod u cti 0 n 37 of speech perception. The following are among the most frequently cited produced by an adult male and yet they are perceived as the same unit. theories: In other words, part of the processing of speech must involve normali sation. This is a process whereby listeners judge sounds to be equiva (a) Motor theory. A theory developed in the 1960s that argued that lent even when acoustically they may be very different. listeners are able to reconstruct messages from the process of smearing Not surprisingly, auditory phonetiCS has become increasingly impor by reference to their own speech production. In other words, because I tant to those linguists interested in the mental processes of language also smear the sounds in cat when I pronounce them, I am able to use acquisition (see CHILD LANGUAGE). It should also be apparent that, as we that knowledge, albeit subconsciously, in interpreting the same sounds have said, although phonetics is concerned with the physical properties when I hear them.

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