: to find out about articulatory and physiological features of speech sounds.
Auditory phonetics ( ) studies the perceptual response to speech sounds, as mediated by ear, auditory nerve and brain, i.e. its interests lie more in the sensation of hearing, which is brain activity, than in the psychological working of the ear or the nervous activity between the ear and the brain. The means by which we discriminate sounds quality, sensations of pitch, loudness, length, are relevant here.
Before analysing the linguistic function of phonetic units we need to know how the vocal mechanism acts in producing oral speech and what methods are applied in investigating the material form of the language, that is its substance.
Human speech is the result of a highly complicated series of events. The formation of the concept takes place at a linguistic level, that is in the brain of the speaker; this stage may be called psychological. The message formed within the brain, is transmitted along the nervous system to the speech organs. Therefore we may say that the human brain controls the behaviour of the articulating organs which effects in producing a particular pattern of speech sounds. This second stage may be called physiological. The movements of the speech apparatus disturb the air stream thus producing sound waves. Consequently the third stage may be called physical or acoustic. Further, any communication requires a listener, as well as a speaker. So the last stages are the reception of the sound waves by the listener's hearing physiological apparatus, the transmission of the spoken message through the nervous system to the brain and the linguistic interpretation of the information conveyed.
Articulatory phonetics borders with anatomy and physiology and the tools for investigating just what the speech organs do are tools which are used in these fields: direct observation, wherever it is possible, e.g. lip movement, some tongue movement; combined with X-ray photography or X-ray cinematography; observation through mirrors as in the laryngoscopic investigation of vocal cord movement, etc.
Read the tongue-twisters:
1. Octopus ocular optics and A cat snaps a rats paxwax.
2. Of all the felt I ever felt, I never felt a piece of felt Which felt as fine as that felt felt, When first I felt that felt hats felt.
3. Oh, the sadness of her sadness when shes sad. Oh, the gladness of her gladness when shes glad. But the sadness of her sadness, and the gladness of her gladness, Are nothing like her madness when shes mad!
4. Old Mr. Hunt had a cuddy punt Not a cuddy punt but a hunt punt cuddy.
5. Old oily Ollie oils old oily autos.
6. On a lazy laser raiser lies a laser ray eraser.
7. On mules we find two legs behind and two we find before. We stand behind before we find what those behind be for.
8. On two thousand acres, too tangled for tilling, Where thousands of thorn trees grew thrifty and thrilling, Theophilus Twistle, less thrifty than some, Thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb!
9. Once upon a barren moor There dwelt a bear, also a boar, The bear could not bear the boar, The bear thought the boar was a bore. At last the bear could bear no more That boar that bored him on the moor. And so one morn he bored the boar- That boar will bore no more!
10. One black beetle bled only black blood, the other black beetle bled blue.
1. What stage is called psychological?
2. What stage is called physiological?
3. What stage is called acoustic?
4. What does articulatory phonetics border with?
5. What do we need to know before analysing the linguistic function of phonetic units?
˳ [ 3, c. 130 - 134].
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