The World of Language Study: The Distinction Between Phonetics and Phonology (1)

:: Linguistics :: 4.4.06

The Distinction Between Phonetics and Phonology (1)

The study of speech sounds is partitioned betweem two distinct but related sub-disciplines of linguistics, phonetics and phonology. Both termscome from Greek word meaning 'sound'

V. Fromkin and R. Rodman, in their book entitled 'An Introduction to Language' define phonetics as the study of the speech sounds that are utilized by all human languages to represent meaning, and phonology as the study of the sound pattern of human language; it is also the kind of knowledge thar speakers have about the sound pattern of their particular languages.

From the same point of view, phonetics can be difined as a branch of linguistics that studies the characteristics of human sound-making, which regards to three majir processes i.e 1). articulatory production of speech sounds (articolatory phonetics)-the action of speech organs in producing the speech sounds, 2). structure of the acoustic flow (acoustic phonetics)-the acoustic nature of the sound waves which transmit speech between mouth and ears, 3). processes involved in auditory perception (auditory and perceptual phonetics)-the manner in which the ears and the brain interpret speech.

Phonetics was substantially developed by the ancient Indians and by the medieval Arabs, but the modern tradition began in the sixteenth century in England, and it was in nineteeth- and twentieth-century Britain that such figures as Alexander Maville Bell, Henry Sweet, and Daniel Jones chiefly created modern phonetics, though most of the instrumental techniques are far more recent. And the classical Indian scholars described Sanskrit with remarkable accuracy in articulatory phonetics (Allen,1953).

Comes to phonology. It is a branch of linguistics that studies the sound systems of languages. Phonology also concerns with semantically relevant speech sounds and their pertinent characteristics, relations, and systems viewed synchronically and diachronically. The concerned area of phonology is the organization of speech within specific languages, or with the system and pattern of sounds that occur in particular languages.

The history of phonology is largely taken up with the development of ideas concerning the phoneme, as originally propunded in Prague School and Bloomfieldian phonological theory, and the subsequent alternative proposed views.