The subject-matter of phonetics, its practical aims.

Phonetics is a science devoted to the physical analysis of the sounds of human speech, including their production, transmission, and perception.

Phonetics is traditionally divided into two branches: acoustic, concerned with the structure of the acoustic signal itself, and articulatory, concerned with the way these sounds are produced.

Theoretical Phonetics studies speech sounds:

1) from every point of view.

Articulatory point of view - every speech sound is a complex of definite finely coordinated and differentiated movements and positions of the various speech organs.

Acoustic - speech sounds have certain physical properties.

Phonological - speech sounds are studied through the phonological oppositions.

Auditory - all of speech sounds have infinite number of features.

2) studies mechanisms of vowel and consonant production:

Vibrator mechanism - vocal cords

Resonator mechanism - oral cavity, nasal cavity

Obstructer mechanism - tongue, VC, teeth

Power mechanism - lungs, diaphragm

3) sounds are studied not only separately but in clusters and in speech. Thus we've come to kinetics and kinesthetic factors.

4) the matter of analysis:

- description - setting down as many as possible features which are present in sounds.

- classification - mentioning those features by which sounds utter.

One of the main subjects is intonation. Theoretical phonetics views it from the point of view of different schools and approaches:

Russian - intonation consists of speech melody, tones, change in pitch.

British - intonation is a contour, that is a unit of intonation consisting of pre-head, head, nucleus and tail.

American - intonation is pitch. Differences in pitch cause differences in meaning.

Speaking about sounds we usually view them in words, which consist of syllables. This is another subject of theoretical phonetics - syllable division and different approaches to it.

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