linguisticsphonetics

Linguistics phonetics is the branch of linguistics that studies the physical properties of speech sounds. It encompasses how sounds are produced (articulatory phonetics), how they propagate as sound waves (acoustic phonetics), and how they are perceived by listeners (auditory phonetics). Phonetics investigates sounds across languages, providing methods for describing and transcribing them. It is distinct from phonology, which focuses on the abstract systems of contrastive sounds and their organization within a language.

In practice, phonetics relies on three interrelated subfields. Articulatory phonetics analyzes the movements of the tongue, lips, vocal folds, and other speech organs. Acoustic phonetics examines the acoustic properties of speech waves, such as formants, pitch, and duration. Auditory phonetics studies how listeners perceive and categorize sounds. Researchers use tools including the International Phonetic Alphabet for transcription, spectrograms and waveform analysis, and imaging or sensor technologies such as ultrasound or electromagnetic articulography to gather data.

Applications of linguistic phonetics span several domains. It informs the study of sound patterns in languages, supports language teaching and pronunciation training, underpins speech technology (speech synthesis and recognition), and assists clinical work in diagnosing and treating speech disorders. Phonetic data also contribute to language documentation, forensics, and cross-language comparisons of phonetic systems. The field emphasizes methodological rigor, replicable experiments, and cross-linguistic data to understand the biological and cognitive bases of human speech.