Discuss the different branches of phonetics.
Introduction
Phonetics is the study and classification of speech sounds. To put it differently, it is the science of speech sounds and their production, transmission, and reception, and their analysis, classification, and transcription.
Branches of Phonetics
The study of phonetics can be divided into three main branches: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory phonetics.
Articulatory Phonetics
Articulatory phonetics studies pronunciation. It explains how humans create speech sounds through the interaction of different physiological structures. In general, articulatory phonetics is concerned with the conversion of aerodynamic energy into acoustic energy. Aerodynamic energy refers to the flow of air through the larynx. Its possible form is air pressure; Its dynamic form is the actual dynamic airflow. Sound energy is a variation of air pressure that can be represented as sound waves, which are then perceived as sound in the human auditory system.
Acoustic Phonetics
Acoustic phonetics is one of the subfields of phonetics that was strikingly developed since the second world war. It is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds. It mainly deals with the frequency and amplitude of speech sounds’ transmission. Acoustic phoneticians analyze the speech waves with the help of instruments to describe the physical properties of the stream of sound that issues forth from the mouth of a speaker.
Complex sound waves produced in speech can be analyzed into their component frequencies and relative amplitudes. Considerable progress has also been made in speech synthesis. Acoustic analysis has confirmed that speech is not made up of a sequence of discrete sounds. The articulatory features of rounding of voice, nasality, obstruction, and friction can also be identified acoustically. Acoustic phonetics has achieved a good deal of success in matters of the study of the sound of vowels, but regarding consonants, it has not reached final conclusions.
Auditory Phonetics
Auditory phonetics is the study of hearing and the perception of speech sounds. It studies different auditory impressions of the quality, pitch, and loudness of sounds. The auditory classification of speech sounds has not yet been carried to a decisive phase. At the present time, phonetics can be regarded as being made up of two main branches: articulatory and acoustic phonetics.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, without having a minimum conception of the branches of phonetics, achieving linguistic knowledge is quite impossible.
