
Phonetics | Definition, Types, Examples, & Facts | Britannica
Mar 2, 2025 · phonetics, the study of speech sounds and their physiological production and acoustic qualities. It deals with the configurations of the vocal tract used to produce speech sounds (articulatory phonetics), the acoustic properties of speech sounds (acoustic phonetics), and the manner of combining sounds so as to make syllables , words, and ...
phonetics summary | Britannica
phonetics, Study of speech sounds. It deals with their articulation (articulatory phonetics), their acoustic properties (acoustic phonetics), and how they combine to make syllables, words, and sentences (linguistic phonetics).
Phonetics - Phonology, Rules, Speech | Britannica
Mar 2, 2025 · Phonetics - Phonology, Rules, Speech: In the lexicon of a language, each word is represented in its underlying, or basic, form, which discounts all of the alternations in pronunciation that are predictable by phonological rules.
Phonology | Phonetics, Speech Sounds, Articulation | Britannica
Mar 11, 2025 · Phonology, study of the sound patterns that occur within languages. Some linguists include phonetics, the study of the production and description of speech sounds, within the study of phonology. Diachronic (historical) phonology examines and constructs theories about the changes and modifications
Phonetics - Vowel Formants, Acoustics, Articulation | Britannica
Mar 2, 2025 · Phonetics - Vowel Formants, Acoustics, Articulation: The resonant frequencies of the vocal tract are known as the formants. The frequencies of the first three formants of the vowels in the words heed, hid, head, had, hod, hawed, hood, and who’d are shown in Figure 3.
Phonetics - Chomsky-Halle, Features, Speech | Britannica
Mar 2, 2025 · Phonetics - Chomsky-Halle, Features, Speech: Some of the binary features proposed by Chomsky and Halle are listed in Table 1. The first group comprises major class features, because these features are required for dividing sounds into classes such as vowels, consonants, and semivowels.
Phonetics - Vowel Sounds, Articulation, Acoustics | Britannica
Mar 2, 2025 · Phonetics - Vowel Sounds, Articulation, Acoustics: Vowels traditionally have been specified in terms of the position of the highest point of the tongue and the position of the lips. Figure 2 shows these positions for eight different vowels.
Phonetics - Trills, Articulation, Vowels | Britannica
Mar 2, 2025 · Phonetics - Trills, Articulation, Vowels: A trill results when an articulator is held loosely fairly close to another articulator, so that it is set into vibration by the airstream. The tongue tip and blade, the uvula, and the lips are the only articulators than can be used in this way.
International Phonetic Alphabet - Encyclopedia Britannica
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), an alphabet developed in the 19th century to accurately represent the pronunciation of languages.One aim of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was to provide a unique symbol for each distinctive sound in a language—that is, every sound, or phoneme, that serves to distinguish one word from another.It is the most common example of …
Phonetics - Stress, Intonation, Rhythm | Britannica
Mar 2, 2025 · Phonetics - Stress, Intonation, Rhythm: Vowels and consonants can be considered to be the segments of which speech is composed. Together they form syllables, which in turn make up utterances. Superimposed on the syllables there are other features that are known as suprasegmentals.