Chapter 2 Phonetics: The Study of Speech Sounds

2.1 The study of speech sounds

　 Human communication takes place in the form of linguistic communication and/or paralinguistic communication. The latter is by means of gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, graphs, etc. Messages thus conveyed are perceived through the visual channel. The former takes place in the form of spoken language or written language or both. We communicate through spoken language most of the time. The medium of spoken language is speech sounds, sounds produced by the human vocal tract to convey meaning. The study of speech sounds is called phonetics.

　 When we talk, our brain sends signals to the vocal organs to produce sequences of speech sounds. These sounds, as air waves, strike the eardrums of the listener. The listener's brain reconstructs the messages. The whole process is a chain of events:

production of speech sounds → speech sounds traveling in the air → perception of speech sounds.

　 The study of the first step is the task of articulatory phonetics, which focuses on the production of sounds from a physiological perspective. The study of the second step is the object of acoustic phonetics, which analyses the physical properties of speech sounds. The study of the final step is called auditory phonetics, which focuses on perceptive mechanism of speech sounds. Articulatory phonetics is the primary concern in linguistics.