This document discusses the study of phonetics and its branches. Phonetics is the study of the articulatory and acoustic properties of human speech sounds. It has three main branches: articulatory phonetics studies speech production; acoustic phonetics studies sound transmission; and auditory phonetics studies sound perception. The document focuses on articulatory phonetics as it provides the most reliable information for teaching pronunciation to foreign language learners. It describes the human vocal anatomy and how air is used to produce different speech sounds. Phonetic transcription uses symbols to represent sounds and their relationships to spelling, in order to accurately describe pronunciation.

1. PHONETICS I
UNIT I
PHONETICS AND ITS BRANCHES
Adapted by: Skarly Gómez
Any natural language has design features that give it special characteristics and make it very versatile.
Every time we speak we make choices among the things we want to express and how we want to express them.
So, human languages have structures and features that we as learners must study deeply in order to understand
the nature of their production and how we use them to communicate.
In this unit we are going to be talking about speech sounds; not any noise like knocking, clapping or
napping your fingers; we are going to be focused on the sounds that we produce when we speak.
When a student of a foreign language, English in our case, hears the spoken version of the language it is
often difficult for him to understand what is being said. Often he claims that the vocabulary of the sentence is
too difficult or unknown to him. However, if the same sentence is written and placed before him he can, many
times, interpret it correctly. It is obvious that in such a case the problem is not only lack of knowledge about
the structure or the vocabulary included in the sentence what is causing the trouble but, instead, his inability
to recognize the sounds of English.
For example, when a Spanish-speaking student is learning English and is confronted with a picture of
a woman washing a baby and another where a woman is watching a baby, he surely understands the difference
between the two situations. Again, if he reads two sentences which report the actions represented in the
pictures he will surely understand their meanings. But if he hears the English sentence “The mother is
watching the baby”, he is often unable to decide which of the two actions is being described. The problem
here is his inability to differentiate between the final sounds of the words wash and watch, sounds which we
do not use in our language to distinguish meaning.
The example given illustrates the fact that we must teach the sound system of English in the same way
we teach its vocabulary and structures. English teachers need not only to learn how to pronounce correctly
the English sounds in order to be understood but also to know how to teach their students to pronounce them.
Those pedagogical tools are provided by phonetics.
PHONETICS: it is the study of the articulatory and acoustic properties of the sound of human language.
The stages of the process of communication are studied by different branches of phonetics, which means we
can study speech sounds in any of the following ways:
Production: Articulatory Phonetics
Transmission: Acoustic Phonetics
Reception: Auditory phonetics
Production Transmission Reception
Speech Sounds

2. Branches of Phonetics
ARTICULATORY PHONETICS describes the articulatory movements required to pronounce the
different sounds of a language.
ACOUSTIC PHONETICS is concerned with the physical properties of sounds (length, intensity,
frequency, etc.) and the disturbances they produce when they travel through the air as sound waves.
AUDITORY PHONETICS deals with how speech sounds are perceived by the listener.
Articulatory phonetics deals with an aspect of sounds with which we are all familiar, since we all have
the same vocal organs and we can see and feel how we pronounce sounds. The information provided by this
branch of phonetics is the most reliable source of information for the foreign language teacher to help his
students to modify incorrect pronunciations. For this reason, in this course we will concentrate in the study of
Articulatory phonetics and not in the others branches.
However, it is important to have a general overview of these sciences. For this, we have to understand
the most fundamental requirement for the production of speech sounds is THE AIR STREAM. Breath or air
is primary to speech; you may have lungs, tongue, teeth, even vocal cords; but if you don’t have AIR going
into your mouth or coming out from your mouth you cannot speak. Every time you say something there is air
coming in or out. If there is no air there is no speech.
All speech sounds are produced through Eggressive Air Stream Mechanism. That is the air that goes out from
your mouth. Your stomach press your lungs then the air travels through the trachea and pass by the larynx reaches the
vocal cords and goes out in form of a letter or a word with a specific meaning.
Acoustic Phonetics deals with the transmission of speech sounds. How do speech sounds travel? They travel
in waves. The highest part of a wave is called crest. The lowest part of a wave is called trough.
Auditory Phonetics studies the reception or perception of speech sounds. It deals with how speech air turns
into different sounds in our brain. Have you ever wonder why our ears have that form? How do we listen?
Why do we need two ears? The waves of sounds are distributed through angels into the inner ear which is a
very complex structure. There is very little information about this phenomenon.
Air Stream
Out-coming In-coming
Egressive air stream
mechanism
Ingressive air stream
mechanism
crest crest crest
trough trough trough

3. Articulatory Phonetics
We as human beings have a very large capacity of
producing all kinds of sounds; we can speak like bees, flies,
dogs, birds, etc. In the animal world only four kinds of sounds
are produced: Hisses, Buzzes, Bangs and Glides. Human beings
are able to produce all these sounds because of the versatile
vocal apparatus we have; which includes: lungs, tongue, teeth,
lips, etc.; they manipulate sounds in many different ways and
then produce all kinds of sounds.
To sum up, this branch of phonetics is the most important
for students of a foreign language because it involves all related
with the production of speech sounds.
THE PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION
If we analyze carefully the way languages are written and spoken, we will find that there is not an exact
correspondence between their writing and their pronunciation. For example in English we will find that:
1. Different letters represent a single sound: tea, key, see, me
2. The same letter may represent different sounds: father, rat, hate, among
3. The same letter may represent two sounds: use, student, cute
4. Some letters are silent: honor, knight, Christmas, psychology
5. A combination of letters may represent a single sound: shoot, character. Thomas, rough.
To represent these inconsistencies between pronunciation and spelling we need a phonetic alphabet
because in a phonetic alphabet there is one to one relationship between sound and symbol. Phonetic
transcriptions are the representation of speech sounds by means of phonetic symbols in a consistent and
systematic way.
To transcript a letter or a word you need to know all the symbols that represent each individual sound of the
English language.
Be careful! They ARE NOT letters they are symbols; and they must be written in the same way
all the time between slashes ( / / ) for example:
Some consonant sounds: /p/ /k/ /f/ /v/ /b/ /n/ /ŋ/ /m/ /ʒ/ /ʃ/ /ʧ/
Some vowel sounds: /a:/ /ʌ/ /e/ /i:/ /I/ /ɔ:/ /u:/ /ʊ/ /ɜ/ /ə/

4. The International Phonetic Association (IPA) provides the phonetic alphabet most commonly used around
the world. This is a body founded in 1886 by a group of phoneticians from France, Germany, Britain, and
Denmark. In this course we will restrict to the use of this phonetic alphabet.
During this course we will study sounds through symbols. The aim of this approach is to use the phonemic
symbol as a visual hook for the physical and auditory experience of a sound.