Branches of Phonetics

Branches of Phonetics

Acoustic phonetics:-

            Acoustic phonetics is an important part of phonetics. It is the study of the physics of speech signal. When sound travels through the air from the speaker’s mouth to the hearer’s ear it does so in the form of vibrations in the air. It is possible to measure and analyze the vibration by mathematic techniques, usually using specially developed computer software to produce spectrograms. Acoustic phonetics also studies the relationship between activity in the speaker’s vocal tract, and the resulting sounds. Analysis of speech by acoustic phonetics is claimed to be more objective and scientific than the traditional auditory method which depends on the reliability of the trained human ear. It studies physical properties of speech-sounds.  It describes the physical properties of the stream of sound that flows from the mouth of the speaker.

            Acoustic phonetics has developed to a great extent since the Second Word War. It deals with our sense of hearing. It studies complex sound waves produced in speech side by side. Considerable progress has been made in speech-synthesis also. Acoustic analysis has proved that speech is not made up of a sequence of sound. Acoustic phonetics identifies nasality obstruction and friction. It has achieved a great success in the matters of vowels, but regarding consonants it has not reached final conclusion.

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