Page 51 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 4: Phonetics: Speech Mechanisms-Places and Manners of Articulation

The Nineteenth Century Notes
Since the Renaissance the elocutionists, language teachers, spelling reformers, shorthand inventors,
auxiliary language enthusiasts, and missionaries have taken interest in phonetics. But it was at the
beginning of the nineteenth century that phonetics recieved a real boost with the discovery of the
ancient Indian phoneticians mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. In 1867 Alexander Melvile
Bell set out to classify all the sounds capable of being articulated by the human speech organs and
to allot a systematic and related series of symbols to the sounds. By the end of the nineteenth
century the developments in physiology and acoustics, and the accompanying progress in
instrumentation (as demonstrated by Alexander Bell’s system of Visible Speech), had stimulated a
considerable amount of experimental research into all branches of phonetics. Also in the late
nin-teenth century scholars like Henry Sweet attempted at producing a phonetic alphabet; and the
international phonetic Alphabet, which is still the system in general use, came to be formulated
in 1889.

In England Alexander J. Ellis (1814-90) presented to English children as well as to
foreigners, an alphabet (Phonotype, 1847). He also developed other types of alphabet
notably Glossic and Palaeotype.

The Twentieth Century
In the present century phonetics has developed immensely into various branches and is mature
enough to claim an independent status as a discipline. Already some linguists have talked about
linguistic sciences— by which they mean phonetics and linguistics, the former dealing with the
general properties of human sound making the latter with those properties which are of importance
in the system of a particular language. The focus of interest in this century has been to find out
accurate and precise ways of the modern age. Spectographs, oscillographs, sound-monitoring
machines, tape-recorders, and a number of other electronic devices developed by communications
engineering have been greatly helpful in studying sounds. The aim of phonetics now-a-days is not
to provide a notation: it is to analyse speech into its basic units, which may thereafter be transcribed
in some way. Hence the phonetic description is primary: a notation secondary. The contribution of
Daniel Jones, Abercrombie, Gimson in Britain and of Roman Jakobson, Morris Halle, Chomsky,
Trager and Smith in the United States, besides a host of European and Russian scholars, to the
study of speech-sounds is of considerable significance.

4.3 Branches of Phonetics

The study of phonetics can be divided into three main branches: Acoustic, Auditory and
Articulatory.

4.3.1 Acoustic Phonetics
Acoustic phoneticians analyse the speech waves with the help of instruments; they attempt to
describe the physical properties of the stream of sound that issues forth from the mouth of a
speaker.
It is in the field of acoustic phonetics that the most striking developments have taken place since
the Second World War. Complex sound waves produced in speech can be analysed into their
component frequencies and relative amplitudes. Considerable progress has also been made in
speech-synthesis. Acoustic analysis has confirmed (if confirmation was needed) that speech is not
made up of a sequence of discrete sounds. The articulatory features of rounding of voice, of
nasality, of obstruction and of friction can also be identified acoustically. Acoustic phonetics has
achieved a good deal of success in matters of the study of the sound of vowels, but regarding
consonants it has not reached final conclusions.

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