PHONETIC

What Is Linguistic?

Linguistics is the scientific study of Language.  Linguists (people who are specialists in Linguistics) do work on specific languages, but their primary goal is to understand the nature of Language in general:  …what distinguishes human language from other animal communication systems? …what features are common to all human languages? …how are the modes of linguistic communication (speech, writing, sign language of the deaf) related to each other? …how is Language related to other types of human behavior?

The main goal of the study of Linguistics in an academic setting, like all other intellectual disciplines, is to increase our knowledge and understanding of the world.  However, since Language is universal and fundamental to all human interactions, the knowledge attained in Linguistics has many practical applications.  Linguists, with some training in other appropriate disciplines, would thus be prepared to seek answers to questions such as the following: …how can a previously unstudied language be analyzed and written? …how can foreign languages best be taught and learned? …how can speech be synthesized on a computer or (far more difficult) how can a computer be programmed to understand human speech? …how can the language problems of people with speech abnormalities be analyzed and rectified? …how are linguistic issues in legal matters to be handled.

And the part of linguistics that is concerned with the sound of language is divided into a number of subfields: 

1.      Phonetics:  This is the study of speech sounds themselves.  Phoneticians study both the production of speech sounds by the human speech organs (articulatory phonetics) and the properties of the sounds themselves (acoustic phonetics).  Phoneticians are concerned with such questions as the following: …what are the sounds, from among all those that humans could make, that actually exist in the world’s languages? …what specially defines different “accents”? …can speakers be identified by “voiceprints”? ...what are the properties of sounds that would go into computerized speech synthesis?