Several Aspects Of Phonetics

Several Aspects of Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of the sounds that humans produce in order to communicate. But did you know that there are three ways that phonetics can be studied? There isarticulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics. Each one of these approaches of phonetics can help us understand about how human beings make communicative sounds, how they aremade up, and how others perceive them.
Articulatory phonetics mainly studies the sounds that humans produce. The organs that help us speak are known as vocal organs. There are two types of vocalorgans, supraglottal and subglottal organs. These are divided in terms of their position above or below the glottis. Subglottal organs include the larynx, lungs, diaphragm, and vocal cords, amongothers. These organs mainly deal with the amount and speed of the air that is used in speaking. The supraglottal organs involve the mouth, pharynx, nasal cavities, uvula, and tongue among others. Theseon the other hand deal how the air is meant to be released, at what time and the pitch of the sound by means of being arranged in order to produce a desired sound.
Acoustic phonetics mainly studiesthe composition of the sounds that a person makes. If an adult man were to make the sound /s/, it would be nearly identical to that of an adult woman, or even a girl. The same can roughly be saidabout other sounds that are relatively easy to produce such as /t/, /b/, /l/, /m/. However, the mentioned phonemes are only consonants, vowel are somewhat different. Since the flow of air for vowels ismainly affected by the position of the tongue and the shape of the lips, the sounds produced are somewhat similar, however they obviously differ due to each person’s anatomical variants in terms ofvocal organs, and even other factors such as accents or fluidity in talking. An example of this would be, an adult man from Boston would pronounce the vowel /æ/ in a way different than a young girl...