Phonetics: An overview.
| Number | 174 |
|---|---|
| Year | 1974 |
| Drawer | 3 |
| Entry Date | 07/09/1998 |
| Authors | Abramson, A. S. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | A Current Trends in Linguistics, 12, 2187-2200. |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0174.pdf |
| Abstract | [Introduction] Phonetics is traditionally concerned with the ways in which the sounds of speech are produced, but the resulting descriptions normally mix auditory factors with articulatory ones, thus depending ultimately upon percepts of the phonetician. This would be true even in a laboratory report using such terms as ‘high back vowel’ that do not themselves stem from instrumental analysis. At the very least, then, we must include the hearing of speech sounds in the definition of phonetics to the extent of allowing for the behavior of the field phonetician who uses his ears to match spans of speech with points or zones of the reference grid he has learned. This grid consists of auditory images correlated with places and manners of articulation. That is, the practical phonetician uses auditory phonetics as a research technique in achieving the goals of articulatory phonetics. In recent decades, with the waxing importance of psychology in phonetic research, there is no question but that auditory perception has become a central topic of phonetics. In addition, the rise of experimental phonetics with its rapidly improving instrumental techniques (Fant 1958; Cooper 1965) has made it possible to look at the speech signal itself, thus adding acoustic phonetics to the scope of the field. In the light of these developments, phonetics may now be defined as the study of the speech signal and its production and perception. A broad view of the interweaving of practical phonetics, the study of the speech signal and its production and perception. A broad view of the interweaving of practical phonetics, the study of the production of speech, analysis of the acoustic signal, and experiments on perception is presented within an historical framework by Dennis B. Fry in his article in this volume. The collaboration of phoneticians, acousticians, electrical engineers, experimental psychologists, and physiologists has enabled phonetics to surge forward in recent decades, but at the same time it tends to hamper the linguist in applying the findings of phonetic research to his own phonological preoccupations. Even if mild professional indignation prompts one to rebuke the linguist whose phonological abstractions seem to be unsupported by the facts of speech production and perception (Abramson and Lisker 1970; Fry in this volume), it certainly behooves us phoneticians to present our material from time to time in a form that our linguist colleagues will find readable. It is hard to think of a textbook in phonetics published in the last decade that fills this fad. Some (e.g. Abercrombie 1967) provide a general theoretical and factual matrix within which to give a course. Others (e.g. Gimson 1962; Malmberg 1963; Schubiger 1970) try to do some justice to the union of linguistic phonetics, acoustics, physiology, and psychology already mentioned There are also a few textbooks that gently introduce their readers to rather technical material (e.g. Ladefoged 1962; Denes and Pinson 1963; Hadding-Koch and Peterson 1965; Zemlin 1968; Lindner 1969); others with this orientation might be considered textbooks, but only by those with some sophistication in mathematics and electronics (e.g. Fant 1960; Flanagan 1965). Certain monographs specifically addressed to linguists have been readable enough to be vulnerable to scholarly criticism as well as appreciated for their possible impact on points of linguistic analysis and theory (e.g. Abramson 1962; Ladefoged 1964; Delattre 1966; Lieberman, 1967; Gardin 1967; Lehiste 1970). Even the well-motivated linguist, then, cannot have found it covenient to keep abreast of new developments in phonetics over the last several years. Scanning the Proceedings of the various international congresses, such as the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, is a haphazard way of doing this. In the absence of comprehensive textbooks a satisfactory way of presenting material on the state of the art and science of phonetics is to invite a group of specialist to contribute chapters to a book. Although one such collection has appeared recently, the new edition of the Manual of phonetics (Malmberg 1968), it was felt that it would be appropriate and useful for a volume of Current Trends in Linguistics to include another collection of papers with a considerable change in the selection of major topics as well as a largely different list of authors. Two of the authors, J.C. Catford and D.B. Fry, reappear but their versatility has permitted us to ask them to contribute chapters on new topics. |
| Notes |
Search Publications