endofonetics

Endofonetics is a linguistic concept that refers to the study of sounds within a specific word or utterance, as opposed to the broader study of how sounds are produced and perceived in language, which is known as phonetics. It focuses on the internal phonetic structure of a linguistic unit.

This approach is distinct from exofonetics, which considers the external factors influencing speech, such as the speaker's physiology, the acoustic environment, and the listener's perception. Endofonetics, therefore, is more concerned with the abstract representation of sounds within a language system and how these sounds function to differentiate meaning.

In practice, endofonetics can be applied to analyze the phonemic inventory of a language, the rules governing sound combinations (phonotactics), and the prosodic features like intonation and stress as they occur within a word or phrase. It's a way of examining the sonic building blocks of language from an internal, structural perspective. While phonetics as a whole is a vast field, endofonetics carves out a specific niche by emphasizing the internal, systemic, and abstract qualities of speech sounds. This perspective is crucial for understanding phonology, the study of sound systems in languages.