CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background

Phonetics is the study of speech. Traditionally, phoneticians have relied on their ears and
eyes, and their awareness of their own vocal organs, to study pronunciation. Increasingly,
however, they have been using instruments of various types to supplement the information they
derive from their own sensations. Experimental phonetics, as the term is commonly used,
includes any investigation of speech by means of instruments. It is understood here that the
instruments are used to visualize some aspect of the speech event, and possibly also to provide a
basis for measurements. For example, a tape recording for the purpose of repeated listening does
not fall within the scope of experimental phonetics, but if the tape recording is fed into a
computer and used to produce an acoustic analysis, the activity would be described as an
experimental investigation.

Until recently, we knew little about what is going on in the brain when people are
speaking, and this is why the science of phonetics has concentrated on the three central
components of the speech chain, where observation of what is going on is fairly straightforward.
However, our understanding of how the brain works in speech communications has grown
enormously in recent years. One of the most significant advances in recent research has been the
development of safe and accurate brain-scanning techniques that can show us the activities of
different parts of the brain when someone is speaking or listening to speech.

B. Problem Formulation

Based on the background above, we can conclude that the problem formulations of this paper
are:

1. What is Phonetics?
2. What are the example and the observation of phonetics?

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 3. What are the organs of speech?

4. What is the kind of English alphabet?

C. Purpose of Writing

Based on the problem formulation above, we can conclude that the purpose of this paper are :

1. To know what is the definition of phonetics.

2. To know the example and the observation of phonetics.

3. To know what are the organ of speech.

4. To know and to understand the kind of English alphabet.

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 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. Explanation of Phonetics

1. Definition of phonetics

Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of speech and their
production, combination, description, and representation by written symbols. Adjective:
phonetic. A linguist who specializes in phonetics is known as a phonetician. Phonetics is the
study of all possible speech sounds, phonology studies the way in which a language's speakers
systematically use a selection of these sounds in order to express meaning. There is a further way
of drawing the distinction. No two speakers have anatomically identical vocal tracts, and thus no
one produces sounds in exactly the same way as anyone else. Yet when using our language we
are able to discount much of this variation, and focus on only those sounds, or properties of
sound, that are important for the communication of meaning.

We think of our fellow speakers as using the 'same' sounds, even though acoustically they
are not. Phonology is the study of how we find order within the apparent chaos of speech sounds.
When we talk about the 'sound system' of English, we are referring to the number of phonemes
which are used in a language and to how they are organized.

Phonetics' is the study of pronunciation. Other designations for this field of inquiry
include 'speech science' or the 'phonetic sciences' (the plural is important) and 'phonology. Some
prefer to reserve the term 'phonology' for the study of the more abstract, the more functional, or
the more psychological aspects of the underpinnings of speech and apply 'phonetics' only to the
physical, including physiological, aspects of speech. In fact, the boundaries are blurred and some
would insist that the assignment of labels to different domains of study is less important than
seeking answers to questions.

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2. Three different aspects of phonetics

Phonetics (from the Greek word phone = sound or voice) is a fundamental branch of Linguistics
and itself has three different aspects:

 Articulatory Phonetics - describes how vowels and consonants are produced or

“articulated” in various parts of the mouth and throat;

 Acoustic Phonetics - a study of how speech sounds are transmitted: when sound travels
through the air from the speaker's mouth to the hearer's ear it does so in the form of
vibrations in the air.

 Auditory Phonetics - a study of how speech sounds are perceived: looks at the way in
which the hearer’s brain decodes the sound waves back into the vowels and consonants
originally intended by the speaker.

These areas are inter-connected through the common mechanism of sound, such as
wavelength (pitch), amplitude, and harmonics. The actual sound produced, such as a simple
vowel or consonant sound is called phone.

Phonetics as a research discipline has three main branches:

 Articulatory phonetics is concerned with the articulation of speech: The position, shape,
and movement of articulators or speech organs, such as the lips, tongue, and vocal folds.

 Acoustic phonetics is concerned with acoustics of speech: The spectro-temporal of

properties of the sound waves produced by speech, such as their frequency, amplitude,
and harmonic structure.

 Auditory phonetics is concerned with speech perception: the perception, categorization,

and recognition of speech sounds and the role of the auditory system and the brain in the
same.

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 The boundaries between the disciplines of phonetics and phonology aren't always sharply
defined. Phonetics is a discipline of linguistics that focuses on the study of the sounds used in
speech. It is not concerned with the meaning of these sounds, the order in which they are placed,
or any other factor outside of how they are produced and heard, and their various properties. This
discipline is closely related to phonology, which focuses on how sounds are understood in a
given language, and semiotics, which looks at symbols themselves.

3. Phonetics and Phonology

The actual sound produced, such as a simple vowel or consonant sound is called phone.
Closely associated with Phonetics is another branch of Linguistics known as Phonology.
Phonology deals with the way speech sounds behave in particular languages or in languages
generally. This focuses on the way languages use differences between sounds in order to convey
differences of meaning between words. All theories of phonology hold that spoken language can
be broken down into a string of sound units (phonemes). A phoneme is the smallest ‘distinctive
unit sound’ of a language. It distinguishes one word from another in a given language. This
means changing a phoneme in a word, produces another word, that has a different meaning. In
the pair of words (minimal pairs) 'cat' and 'bat', the distinguishing sounds /c/ and /b/ are both
phonemes. The phoneme is an abstract term (a speech sound as it exists in the mind of the
speaker) and it is specific to a particular language.

A phoneme may have several allophones, related sounds that are distinct but do not
change the meaning of a word when they are interchanged. The sounds corresponding to the
letter "t" in the English words 'tea' and 'trip' are not in fact quite the same. The position of the
tongue is slightly different, which causes a difference in sound detectable by an instrument such
as a speech spectrograph. Thus the [t] in 'tea' and the [t] in 'trip' are allophones of the phoneme
/t/.

Phonology is the link between Phonetics and the rest of Linguistics. Only by studying
both the phonetics and the phonology of English is it possible to acquire a full understanding of
the use of sounds in English speech.

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B. Examples and Observations

Linguistics contributes to phonetics its phonological understanding of the distinctive patterns

that make up the coded, conventional aspects of speech which differentiate individual words and
other units of spoken language. Phonetics contributes to linguistics its phonetic understanding of
the production and perception of the detailed artefact of speech that embody those significant
phonological patterns. Each contribution is complemented by the other.

1) The Study of Phonemes

"In any language we can identify a small number of regularly used sounds (vowels and
consonants) that we call phonemes; for example, the vowels in the words 'pin' and 'pen' are
different phonemes, and so are the consonants at the beginning of the words 'pet' and 'bet.'
Because of the notoriously confusing nature of English spelling, it is particularly important to
learn to think of English pronunciation in terms of phonemes rather than letters of the
alphabet; one must be aware, for example, that the word 'enough' begins with the same vowel
phoneme as that at the beginning of 'inept' and ends with the same consonant as 'stuff.'"

2) Phonetics and the Brain

"Until recently, we knew little about what is going on in the brain when people are
speaking, and this is why the science of phonetics has concentrated on the three central
components of the speech chain, where observation of what is going on is fairly
straightforward. However, our understanding of how the brain works in speech
communications has grown enormously in recent years. One of the most significant advances
in recent research has been the development of safe and accurate brain-scanning techniques
that can show us the activities of different parts of the brain when someone is speaking or
listening to speech..."

3) Experimental Phonetics

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 "Phonetics is the study of speech. Traditionally, phoneticians have relied on their ears and
eyes, and their awareness of their own vocal organs, to study pronunciation. Increasingly,
however, they have been using instruments of various types to supplement the information
they derive from their own sensations. Experimental phonetics, as the term is commonly
used, includes any investigation of speech by means of instruments. It is understood here that
the instruments are used to visualize some aspect of the speech event, and possibly also to
provide a basis for measurements. For example, a tape recording for the purpose of repeated
listening does not fall within the scope of experimental phonetics, but if the tape recording is
fed into a computer and used to produce an acoustic analysis, the activity would be described
as an experimental investigation."

4) The Phonetics-Phonology Interface

"Phonetics interfaces with phonology in three ways. First, phonetics defines distinctive
features. Second, phonetics explains many phonological patterns. These two interfaces
constitute what has come to be called the 'substantive grounding' of phonology.

5) Relation to phonology

In contrast to phonetics, phonology is the study of how sounds and gestures pattern in and
across languages, relating such concerns with other levels and aspects of language. Phonetics
deals with the articulatory and acoustic properties of speech sounds, how they are produced,
and how they are perceived. As part of this investigation, phoneticians may concern
themselves with the physical properties of meaningful sound contrasts or the social meaning
encoded in the speech signal (socio-phonetics) (e.g. gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.).

C. Organs of Speech

Speech organs or articulators, produce the sounds of language. Organs used for speech
include the lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, velum (soft palate), uvula, glottis and various
parts of the tongue. They can be divided into two types: passive articulators and active
articulators.

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 1) Active articulators move relative to passive articulators, which remain still, to produce
various speech sounds, in particular manners of articulation.

2) The upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft palate, uvula, and pharynx wall are
passive articulators.

The most important active articulator is the tongue as it is involved in the production of the
majority of sounds. The lower lip is another active articulator. But glottis is not active articulator
because it is only a space between vocal folds.

Organs of Speech : Lips, Teeth, Tongue, Alveolar Ridge, Hard Palate, Velum, Uvula, and Glottis

1) Lips the upper lip and lower lip help to produce bilabial sounds /p, b, m/. If they are held
together, the sounds produced in that position are bilabial stop : / p, b/. If the lips are held
together, they produce different vowels.

2) Teeth the tip of the tongue helps to produce /t, d, z, etc/. The blade of the tongue helps to
produce /t∫, d3, ∫, etc/. The front of the tongue helps to produce palatal sound /j/ and the
back of the tongue helps to produce /k, g/ sounds.

3) Tongue -with its wide variety of possible movements, it assists in forming the sounds of
speech.

4) Alveolar Ridge -hard ridge behind upper front teeth. It is between the roof of the mouth
and the upper teeth.

5) Hard Palate -also known as the roof of the mouth.

6) Velum The soft palate is movable, consisting of muscle fibers sheathed in mucous
membrane. It is responsible for closing off the nasal passages during the act of
swallowing, and also for closing off the airway.

7) Uvula the loose hanging end of the soft palate.

8) Glottis it assist in forming the buzzing sounds (g, ng, j)

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D. The English Alphabet

The English alphabet has 26 letters. Each letter has a lower and upper case form. The letters A,
E, I, O, U are vowels.

[ei]
A a N n [en]
[bi:]
B b O o [ou]
[si:]
C c P p [pi:]
[di:]
D d Q q [kju:]
[i:]
E e R r [a:]
[ef]
F f S s [es]
G g [ i:] T t [ti:]
H h [ei ] U u [ju:]
I i [ai] V v [vi:]
J j W w [d blju:]
[ ei]
K k X x [eks]
[kei]
L l Y y [wai]
[el]
M m Z z [zed] or [AmE zi:]
[em]

The International Phonetic Association has a special alphabet for describing all of the
different sounds, or phones, currently thought to be used in human speech. The International
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) has more than 100 distinct phones listed and given distinct notation.
Sounds can be separated into a number of different groups, based on whether they use air from
the lungs or not, whether they are voiced or not, the position of the tongue in the mouth, and how
the sound is altered. While the bulk of sounds made by the speakers of the world fall into a

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somewhat narrow band of this spectrum, there are other sounds that are quite different, such as
the clicks and smacking sounds made in some African languages.

Most consonants, called pulmonic consonants, use air from the lungs and can be placed
on a grid depending on which parts of the vocal tract are used to articulate the speech sound and
how air is obstructed as it passes through the mouth. For example, the sound /p/ uses both lips to
articulate air, and is therefore known as a bilabial. It also consists of a full stop of air, known as a
plosive. The /p/ sound, therefore, as well as the /b/ sound, can be described as a bilabial plosive.
The /b/ sound, since the vocal fold is vibrating as it is said, is called a voiced bilabial plosive,
while the /p/ sound, which has no such vibration, is called an unvoiced bilabial plosive.

All the consonant sounds used in speech can be described in this manner, from the /r/
sound in English, which is called an alveolar trill, for example, to the sound at the beginning of
the word "yet," transcribed in IPA with the symbol j and described as a palatal approximant, to
the deep-throated Arabic sounds of the pharyngeal fricatives.

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 CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion

According to explanation of phonetics above, we can take the conclusion :

1. Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of speech and their
production, combination, description, and representation by written symbols. Phonetics
from the greek word phone meaning sound or voice -branch of linguistic that comprises

the study of the sounds and their production.

2. Phonetics (from the Greek word phone = sound/voice) is a fundamental branch of
Linguistics and itself has three different aspects: Articulatory Phonetics, Acoustic
Phonetics, and Auditory Phonetics.

3. Speech organs or articulators, produce the sounds of language. Organs used for speech
include the lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, velum (soft palate), uvula, glottis and
various parts of the tongue.

4. The English alphabet has 26 letters. Each letter has a lower and upper case form. The
letters A, E, I, O, U are vowels. The International Phonetic Association has a special
alphabet for describing all of the different sounds, or phones, currently thought to be used
in human speech.

B. Suggestion

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 According to the conclusion above, the phonetics is another branch of Linguistics known
as Phonology. Phonology deals with the way speech sounds behave in particular languages or in
languages generally. This focuses on the way languages use differences between sounds in order
to convey differences of meaning between words. Phonetics which we know can help us how to
read the words in English correctly and how to spell the English words more correct. We have to
understand the phonetics if we want to speak in English well.

REFERENCES

A. Books

Peter Roach, English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course, 4th ed. Cambridge
University Press, 2009

Katrina Hayward, Experimental Phonetics: An Introduction. Rout ledge, 2014

B. Internet

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/phonetic

http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ohala/papers/phonetics-ell.pdf

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-phonetics/

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