«инглиз тили лексикологияси» кафедраси

LECTURE 5. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY AS 
DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS 
 
Key words:
Phonetics, articulatory, phonological, speech apparatus, 
acoustic (physical)
 
Key points for discussion: 

Theoretical foundations of phonetic and phonological typologies 

Differences between phonetics and phonology

Comparison of vowel and consonant phonemes 

Stress, intonation, assimilation, dissimilation, reduction, accent, 
rhythm and pause. 

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The term “phonetics” is the Greek word (“phone”-meaning sound, 
voice and “tika” – a science/box) by origin. It deals with oral speech. 
Nevertheless, the definition as “the study of the sounds of a language” is not 
sufficient in modern linguistics. 
Nowadays phonetics is a “science 
which 
studies 
the 
phonetic 
substance and the expression area 
of the language, or otherwise a 
physical media of a language 
(sounds, 
syllables, 
stress, 
and 
intonation)” 
[A. 
Abduazizov.2007,6]. 
Phonetics 
has 
the 
following four main aspects:

articulatory (physiological)

acoustic (physical)

perceptual (auditory)

phonological (social, functional, linguistic). 
Articulatory Phonetics investigates the functioning of one’s speech 
apparatus and mechanism. It is based on profound knowledge of physiology 
and the structure of one’s speech apparatus. While investigating the 
articulatory aspect of speech sounds both subjective and objective methods 
are employed: the method of direct observation (concerning the lips & the 
tongue movements) – subjective method and X-ray photography and X-ray 
cinematography (objective methods).
Acoustic Phonetics studies the acoustic properties of sounds (quantity, 
timber/voice quality, intensity, the pitch of the voice and temporal factor) in 
terms of the frequency of vibration and the amplitude of vibration in relation 
to time. The analysis begins with a microphone, which converts the air 
movement into corresponding electrical 
activity. While investigating the acoustic 
aspect 
of 
speech 
sounds 
special 
laboratory equipment is employed: 
spectrograph, 
intonograph, 
sound 
analyzing 
& 
sound 
synthesizing 
machines.
Auditory Phonetics is aimed at 
investigating the hearing process which 
is the brain activity. Auditory Phonetics 
and Acoustic Phonetics are very closely 
connected.

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Functional Phonetics presupposes investigating the discriminatory 
(distinctive) 
function 
of 
speech 
sounds. 
Phonetics can be divided into several types like: 
General phonetics. It studies universal positions of sound articulation 
(for instance, identification of sounds according to the position the differences 
of labial, tongue and throat consonants, according to the ways of articulation 
of plosive, fricative and plosive-fricative features), although, general acoustic 
features of sounds.
Specific phonetics. It investigates above mentioned issues in the 
samples of certain languages. Specific phonetics researches phonetics in the 
shapes of historical and modern, synchronic and diachronic, descriptive and 
experimental sides.
Comparative phonetics investigates vowel and consonant phonemes, 
their phonetic changes and others in thecomparative aspect of several 
genetically related and non-related languages.
Phonology(sometimes called phonemics or phonematics) is the study of 
how sounds are used in languages to convey meaning. The term of phonology 
(Greek phone - sound, logos – science) appeared in linguistics in the necessity 
of differentiating functional (linguistic) sides of speech sounds from the 
physiological-acoustic (physic) sides in the end of XIX century. It studies the 
rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds 

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and the shape of syllables. It deals with the sounds systems of a language by 
treating phoneme as the point of departure. 
With another word, phonetics deals with sounds and phonology deals 
with phonemes. Or else phonology deals with language sounds and phonetics 
deals with human speech sounds. 
Phonetics and phonology have two levels: