Phonetics is the study of human speech sounds, how they are produced, transmitted, and perceived, while phonology focuses on the sound system and rules of a particular language. There are three main branches of phonetics: articulatory phonetics examines speech production in the vocal tract, acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of sounds, and auditory phonetics investigates sound perception. Phonology deals with the organization and permissible combinations of sounds within a language's system. It has two types: segmental phonology considers individual speech sounds, and suprasegmental phonology examines features like stress, rhythm, and intonation that extend over multiple sounds.
1. Phonetics & Phonology
Sheikh Muhammad Mughees (PhD Scholar in Applied Linguistics)
Lecturer, Department of English
NUML, Islamabad
2. Phonetics
• Phonetics is a branch of linguistics which deals with the study of
human speech sounds: how they are produced, how they are
heard, and how they are transmitted.
• The study of phonetics does not focus on the sounds of the
particular language as it deals with the sounds in general.
• In other words, it focuses on the production of sounds and not
their organization.
3. Types of Phonetics
• Phonetics has three main branches:
(1) Articulatory phonetics
(2) Acoustic phonetics
(3) Auditory phonetics.
4. Types…
• Articulatory phonetics describes in detail how the speech
organs, also called vocal organs or articulators, in the vocal tract
are used in order to produce or articulate speech sounds.
• Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech
sounds, i.e. the way in which the air vibrates as sounds pass from
speaker to listener.
5. • A spectrograph is a machine that measures the sound waves and
depicts them as images, called spectrograms or sonograms,
showing the duration, frequency, intensity, and quality of the
sounds.
• Auditory phonetics investigates the perception of speech
sounds by the listener, i.e. how the sounds are transmitted from
the ear to the brain, and how they are processed.
Types…
6. Cont…
• Phonetics is an indispensable prerequisite for phonology, and is
therefore an integral part of all introductions to linguistics.
• In the language departments of most universities, the study of
phonetics is largely restricted to articulatory phonetics because of
its applications to the learning and teaching of pronunciation.
7. Phonology
• It is the study of human speech sounds in a particular language.
• It is also called functional phonetics as it deals with the rules and
regulations which the sounds of a language have to follow.
• In other words, it is concerned with the organization of speech
sounds of a language.
• Each language in the world, whether written or not, has its own
phonology.
8. Types of Phonology
• Segmental phonology is based on the segmentation of language
into individual speech sounds provided by phonetics.
• Unlike phonetics, however, segmental phonology is not interested
in the production, the physical properties, or the perception of
these sounds, but in the function and possible combinations of
sounds within the sound system.
9. Types of Phonology
• Suprasegmental phonology, also called prosody, is concerned
with those features of pronunciation that cannot be segmented
because they extend over more than one segment, or sound.
• Such features include stress, rhythm, and intonation.
