INTRODUCTION:

Phonetics is a branch of Linguistics that examines the inventory and structure of the sounds of speech. There are three ways of approaching phonetics. The first, articulatory phonetics, studies the physiological mechanisms of speech production. The second, acoustic phonetics, measures and analyzes the physical properties of the sound waves humans produce when we speak. The third, auditory or perceptual phonetics, is concerned more with the hearer than the speaker. This approach studies how hearers of language perceive the speech sounds that they receive via their auditory channels.

While the focus of this unit will be the articulatory properties of speech sounds, we will implicitly make reference to acoustic and perceptual properties of speech sounds throughout the course. As Clark and Yallop point out, "These different aspects of speech are of course integrated: speech sounds cannot be divorced from the organs that articulate them, a sound wave does not exist in isolation from the source that generates it, and so on" (1990; p. 2).

In this unit, you will learn how the human body physically makes the sounds of language. Phoneticians make a distinction between vowels and consonants in describing articulatory properties. As you will soon discover, consonants are classified based on the following 3 aspects of articulation:

  • place of articulation
  • manner of articulation
  • voicing

Vowels are classified based on the following 4 aspects of articulation:

  • tongue height
  • tongue backness
  • lip rounding
  • tenseness of the articulators

IMPORTANT NOTE: In the human bust graphic representations throughout these readings, the face consistently points to the left. You will see why this is important in Unit 2.

READINGS:

Phonetics section of the LSP web site:

PRACTICE EXERCISES:

Phonetics section of the LSP web site: