What is phonetics? It is the study of the production, transmission and reception of speech sounds. It studies the medium of the spoken language. It looks at speech from three distinct viewpoints: It studies speech organs. It studies sound waves; the physical way in which sound is transmitted through air from one person to another.

3. It studies how humans perceive sounds 3. It studies how humans perceive sounds. Phonetics studies the features of all vocal noise. Phoneticians attempt to examine how speech organs function during the production of speech sounds.

Speech is made up of sounds. Writing is made up of letters. There is no one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds in most languages.

Example “a” has 4 different sounds in: Cat /kæt/ Father /ˈfɑːðə/ 3. Walk /wɔːk/ 4. About /əˈbaʊt/

One sound may be represented by one letter. The second sound in sun, son, country and does is /ʌ/. “oo” may also represent /ʌ/ as in blood.

Every speech activity has two ends Production and reception. Speaker and listener. Auditory – with listener Articulatory – with producer (speaker) Acoustic – different shapes of air pressures produced when speaking.

Branches of Phonetics Phonetics Articulatory Acoustic Auditory

Articulatory phonetics Studies how speech organs move during the production of sounds. Organs of speech include lungs, larynx, soft palate, hard palate, tongue, teeth, lips.

Acoustic phonetics Studies the acoustic characteristics of speech, including an analysis and description of speech in terms of its physical properties, such as frequency, intensity, and duration.

Auditory phonetics Studies how speech sounds are heard.

Chapter Two Organs of Speech

In the production of English sounds, we make use of an aggressive pulmonic air-stream, i.e. the air is pushed out of the lungs through the mouth or nose.

Organs of speech are divided into: Mobile/active (lips, tongue, lower jaw, velum) Fixed/passive (larynx, pharynx, hard palate and alveolar ridge)

Place of articulation

There are 8 common places of articulation in English.

Bilabial Two lips coming together in producing three sounds: /p/, /b/ and /m/

Labiodental Lower lip + upper teeth Two sounds: /f/, /v/

Dental Tip/blade of tongue + upper teeth Two sounds: and

/t, d, s, z, n, l, r/ Alveolar Tip/blade of tongue + alveolar ridge 7 sounds /t, d, s, z, n, l, r/

Palato-Alveolar Tip of the tongue close alveolar ridge Front of the tongue concave to roof of the mouth Four sounds: /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/

Palatal Front of the tongue approximates to the hard palate One sound /j/ as in you, university

Velar Back of the tongue approximates to the soft palate Four sounds Plosives /k, g/ Nasal Semi-vowel /w/