Linguistics 1028A/B Chapter 2: Phonetics- The Sounds of Language

• School: Western University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: Linguistics 1028A/B
• Professor: Stephanie Kelly

Document Summary

Phonetics: the study of the structure of the sounds of speech. Phones or speech sounds: individual units of sound. Articulatory phonetics: analyzing the physiological mechanisms of speech production. Acoustic phonetics: measuring and analyzing the physical properties of the sound waves we produce when we speak. The international phonetic alphabet (ipa) has been a universal system for transcribing speech sounds since 1888. Each sound of human speech is transcribed into one symbol. All transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets: [ ] While hearing a language spoken for the first time, it is nearly impossible to break words apart into units. Segment: individual phones produced by coordinating a number of individual articulatory gestures including jaw movement, lip shape, and tongue placement. Slips of the tongue wherein two segments" positions are switched have been used as evidence to support the notion that speech sounds should indeed be separated into segments, as this is how our brains work.