Home / Summaries / Liguistics / air-phonetics-vocal

Phonetics and phonology

4 important questions on Phonetics and phonology

Name the three subfields in phonetics!

Articulary phonetics (the study of how the human vocal organ produces sounds)

Acoustic phonetics (the study of the sound waves produced by the human vocal apparatus)

Auditory phonetics (the examination of how speech sounds are perceived by the human ear)

What is the difference between vowels and consonants?

Vowels are voiced sounds made with your mouth open. Consonants are sounds blocked by the tongue, teeth or lips.

What is the difference between ejective and implosive sounds? Give an example of an ejective and an implosive sound.

Ejective sounds: sounds in which air escapes from within the to the outside. The glottis is closed an open and a hard vocal sound emerges. Examples: K, P, T.

Implosive sounds: sounds in which air from outside enters the mouth. The glottis is moved downwards and air is expelled from the lungs. Both air streams together make up the implosive sounds that emerge. Examples: B, D, G.