What Does Phonetics Mean
We explain what phonetics is, its functions, branches and examples. Also, its relationship with phonology.
What is phonetics?
Phonetics is the linguistic discipline that studies the sounds of human speech , that is, the realization and physical perception of the signs that make up the language. It is a discipline close to (although different) from phonology, as they deal with the sound aspect of language .
Phonetics consists, fundamentally, in an approach to the physical aspect of verbal language and the different ways in which it can be articulated, that is, the specific way in which speakers of the same language put it into practice . This is for comparative, descriptive or even medical purposes, as in the case of speech therapy.
For its studies, phonetics uses phonetic transcription , a form of writing that represents in a standardized way the sounds that humans make when communicating verbally, and that correspond directly to some specific unit of the language.
Thus, the minimum units of phonetics are the phones or physical realizations, that is, the types of sounds, which at the level of the language correspond to other types of units, of a mental and abstract type, called phonemes.
That is, to each phoneme or mental sound unit of the language, corresponds to a specific realization in speech, called the phone . For example, Latin American speakers of Spanish perform the phoneme / z / (also represented / θ /) with the phone [s], like this: / zeta / -> ['seta], while a peninsular speaker of Spanish performs the same phoneme with the phone [θ], like this: ['θeta]. However, they both understand each other and speak the same language.
The standard language for phonetic transcriptions throughout the world is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), although there are other complementary regional or local variants.
See also: Linguistics
Phonetics and phonology
Phonetics and phonology are sister linguistic disciplines, addressing human language or verbal language, but they do so from two different and complementary points of view.
Phonology is interested in language as a mental and social system of signs , that is, considering it in the abstract, as a mental system that associates signs with specific sounds. On the other hand, phonetics is only interested in the specific way of making these signs by means of the speech apparatus.
In simpler terms: phonology studies phonemes, that is, the mental traces of sound that serve to build the complex system of a language. On the other hand, phonetics studies phones, that is, the ways in which different groups of speakers of a language produce the sounds that allow them to communicate through a language.
Thus, while phonology is abstract, collective and immaterial, phonetics is concrete, individual and material . The same phoneme can be pronounced very differently by several individuals who speak the same language, depending on their sociocultural group and their individual physical abilities for pronunciation. All this is of interest to phonetics, but not to phonology.
Functions of phonetics
Phonetics has numerous practical applications and functions, such as:
- The study of the speech mode of the users of a language, in order to understand the dialect or sociolectal differences that exist in a community of speakers of a specific language.
- The registration of the forms of speech of the users of a language, to be able to study the way in which the language changes over time , as the use is imposed on the norm .
- The study of the mechanisms of sound production in general, to help people who have linguistic difficulties or who require, for one reason or another, phonetic therapy or speech therapy.
- The understanding of the modes of articulation of the same language by the different speaking communities that use it, for speech recognition technologies and artificial intelligence.
Branches of phonetics
The main branches of phonetics are the following:
- Acoustic phonetics. It consists of the study of speech from the physical point of view, that is, through the measurement and comparison of sound waves . To do this, it uses spectrograms and other measurement tools, which allow the acoustic properties of each speech phone to be detailed.
- Articulatory phonetics. His approach to speech is physiological , that is, it focuses on the human speech system and the way in which the different parts of the body involved in speech cooperate to make one sound or another. This is known as a mode of articulation.
- Perceptual phonetics. Also called auditory phonetics, it undertakes the study of speech from the point of view of the receiver, that is, of the listener. In this sense, he is interested in the auditory apparatus and the methods of interpreting sound waves.
Examples of phonetics
Any phonetic description is a good example of the application of this discipline. Here are some simple cases in Spanish:
- / hunt / - [ka'θar] (said in peninsular Spanish).
- / hunt / - [ka'sar] (said in Latin American Spanish).
- / papanatas / - [papanatas] (said in peninsular Spanish).
- / papanatas / - [papanatah] (said in Caribbean Spanish).
- / bollo / - [boʃo] (said in Rio de la Plata Spanish).
- / bollo / - [boᵎo] (said in Andean Spanish).
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