Lecture 5: Phonetics and Phonology as different branches of Linguistics

Acoustic phonetics

Acoustic phonetics is the study of the acoustic (physical) properties of sounds, which are determined by measuring pitch (formants and frequencies), loudness (amplitude), and quality (timbre). Sounds are measured in terms of sound waves, which are composed of harmonics, frequencies, and formants that show air pressure patterns created during phonation. The physical process of speech production can be divided into three independent elements:

• the source of the sound (i.e. larynx)
• the filters that modify the source (i.e. the shape of the vocal tract formed by articulators)
• the output.

Auditory phonetics

Auditory phonetics focuses on the perception of sounds or the way in which sounds are heard and interpreted. Thus, while articulatory phonetics is mainly concerned with the speaker, auditory phonetics deals with the other important participant in verbal communication, the listener.

In auditory phonetics, we are dealing with two distinct operations which are closely interrelated and influence each other: on the one hand we can talk about audition proper, that is the perception of sounds by our auditory apparatus and the transforming of the information into a neural sign and its sending to the brain and, on the other hand, we can talk about the analysis of this information by the brain which eventually leads to the decoding of the message, the understanding of the verbal message.

Summary of branches of phonetics

Difference between phonetics and phonology

Phonetics relates to the sounds of language, while phonology studies how those sounds are put together to create meaning. Phonemes, or units of sound that are used in all languages to create words, are the focus of the study of phonetics. Phonology studies the rules in any given language that govern how those phonemes are combined to create meaningful words. Phonetics and phonology study two different aspects of sound, but the concepts are dependent on each other in the creation of language.