Lecture 1 Phonetics as a Linguistic Science Plan

Lecture 15

Aspects of Speech Sounds

Plan:

1. 
   Aspects of Speech Sounds
   
2. 
   General Characteristics of Phonemes
   

Speech sounds are 1) produced by man's organs of speech, 2) travel in sound waves, and 3) are perceived by man's hearing mechanism as 4) sounds of language func­tioning as units capable of differentiating meanings of the words.

It follows that speech sounds differ from each other in their physical/acoustic prop­erties, in the way they are produced by the organs of speech and in their features which take part or do not take part in differentiating the meaning, i.e. it will be possible to dis­tinguish the following four aspects: 1) articulatory 2) acoustic 3) auditory 4) functional (linguistic, social) of speech sounds.

Neither of them can be separated in the actual process of communication (in the flow of speech). Each of them can be singled out for linguistic analysis.

The articulatory/sound production aspect: from the articulatory point of view every speech sound is a complex of definite coordinated and differentiated movements and Positions of speech organs. The movements and positions necessary for the production of a speech sound constitute its articulation.

The acoustic aspect: every speech sound is a complex of acoustic effects and has its Physical properties - it is a physical phenomenon, a kind of moving matter and energy. The Physical (acous­tic) properties of speech sounds consist of: 1) frequency, 2) spectrum, 3) irtienstiy, 4) duration.

The auditory/sound-perception aspect involves the mechanism of hearing. It is a kind of psychological mechanism which (i) reacts to the physical properties of speech sounds, (ii) selecting from a great amount of information only the one which is linguistically relevant

The functional/linguistic/social aspect is called so because of the role the sounds of language play in its functioning as medium of human communication.