Phonetics and Vocal Folds

Chapter 1 Phonetics: A “Sound” Science * Phonetics as a field of study * Historical phonetics- involves the study of sound changes in words * There is a constant mutation over time in the pronunciation of words in all languages. * Between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, there was a marked evolution in the pronunciation of English long vowels; this change in vowel pronunciation is known as the “Great Vowel Shift” * Physiological phonetics- involves the study of the function of the individual speech organs during the process of speaking * Acoustic phonetics- Focuses on the differences in the frequency, intensity and duration of the various consonants and vowels * Differences in the acoustic attributes of speech sounds allow listeners to be able to perceive how sounds, syllables, and words differ from one another * Perceptual phonetics- is the study of a listeners psychoacoustic response (perception) of speech sounds in terms of loudness, pitch, perceived length, and quality * Experimental phonetics- entails the laboratory study of physiological, acoustic, and perceptual phonetics * Laboratory equipment is used to measure the various attributes of the speech organs during speech production as well as to measure the acoustic characteristics of speech * The scope of clinical phonetics involves the study and transcription of speech sound disorders * Disordered speech can be found in children or adults who may have experienced a hearing impairment, fluency disorder, head trauma, stroke, phonological disorder * Another “sound” science related to phonetics is phonology * Phonology is the systematic organization of speech sounds in the production of language * Differences between phonetics and phonology is phonetics focuses on the study of speech sounds, their acoustic and perceptual characteristics, and how they are produced by