Äännekuvaa

Äännekuvaa, often translated as "sound image" or "phonetic image," is a concept in phonetics and linguistics that refers to the mental representation of a speech sound. It is not the physical sound wave produced by the vocal tract, nor is it the abstract phoneme in a language system. Instead, it is the subjective, internal perception and memory of a particular sound.

This concept helps explain how speakers recognize and produce sounds. When we hear a word, our brain matches the incoming sound waves to our stored sound images of the phonemes that make up that word. Similarly, when we speak, we access our sound images to guide our articulation.

The notion of sound image has been explored by various linguists, including Ferdinand de Saussure, who distinguished between the acoustic image and the concept. The acoustic image is the sensory impression of the sound, while the concept is the mental meaning associated with it. The sound image bridges these two, acting as the sensory-linguistic link. It is a crucial element in understanding speech perception, production, and language acquisition. It is also relevant in the study of accents and dialectal variations, as individuals within a speech community share similar sound images for their language's phonemes.