Branches of phonetics

Phonetics is not a new science (it was known to ancient Greeks and Hindus), nevertheless, phonetics as an independent science, began to develop in Western Europe and in Russia only in the 19^th century. There has been a considerable progress and growth in the 20^th century. New concepts have sprung up, new theories and new schools have come into existence, new methods of investigation have been developed. Several new branches have also arisen. The most important of them are special phonetics and general phonetics.

Special phonetics can be subdivided into descriptive phonetics and historical phonetics. Special phonetics is concerned with the study of the phonetic structure of one language only, in its static form, at a particular period, synchronically (descriptive phonetics). Historical phonetics deals with the study of the phonetic structure of a language in its historical development, diachronically.

General phonetics is based on the extensive material of a great number of languages. It is also based on other sciences, such as physics, biology, psychology, speech pathology. As a result it derives it derives most of its material from special phonetics and on its basis it makes a number of general conclusions concerning the complex nature of speech sounds. General phonetics analyses speech sounds from different points of view and formulates a number of important theories: the phoneme theory, the theory of syllable formation, theories connected with syntagm, stress, intonation, graphical rules and rules of orthography.

Other branches. The branch of phonetics that studies the way in which the air is set in motion, the movements of the speech organs and the coordination of these movements in the production of single sounds and trains of sounds is called articulatory phonetics. Acoustic phonetics studies the way in which the air vibrates between the speaker’s mouth and the listener’s ear. It presents special interest for research work and applied linguistics. The branch of phonetics investigating the hearing process is known as auditory phonetics. Its interests lie in the sensation of hearing, which is brain activity The means by which we discriminate sounds – quality, sensations of pitch, loudness, length, are relevant here. Instrumental phonetics were introduced into phonetics in the second half of the last century in order to supplement and to rectify the impressions deriving from the human senses, since these are affected by the limitations of the perceptual mechanism, and in general are rather subjective.

Phoneticians cannot act only as describers and classifiers of the material form of phonetic units. They are also interested in the way in which sound phenomena function in a particular language, how they are utilized in that language and what part they play in manifesting the meaningful distinctions of the language The branch of phonetics that studies the linguistic function of consonant and vowel sounds, syllabic structure, word accent and prosodic features, such as pitch, stress and tempo is called phonology.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-04