FAQ:

1. What is phonetics and what are its main branches?

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics which focuses on the physical

manifestations of speech sounds and on theories of speech production and
perception. The main branches of phonetics are articulatory phonetics, acoustic
phonetics and auditory phonetics.

2. What is phonetic transcription?

Most orthographic systems are very unreliable in reflecting the sound

system of a language. Because of this very reason phoneticians have created so-
called phonetic alphabets, enabling us to represent the exact value of each sound
of any language. This precise way of representing the pronunciation of language
is called (phonetic) transcription.

3. What is phonology?

Phonology is concerned with the systems of rules (or constraints) that

determine how the sounds of a language combine and influence one another.

4. What is the difference between phonetics and phonology?

The difference between phonetics and phonology is that of generality and

particularity. Whereas phonetics is the science of speech sounds, their production,
transmission and reception with no particular reference to any particular language,
phonology is the study of vocal sounds and sound changes in a particular
language.

5. What is phoneme?

Phoneme is defined as the smallest unit of speech distinguishing one unit

from another, in all the variations it displays in the speech of one person or in one
dialect as a result of modifying influences, such as neighbouring sounds or stress.

6. What are the different allophonic distributions?

A variant can be either in complementary variation or in free variation. If

the variation results from the occurrence of the phoneme in different
environments or contexts we talk about complementary distribution. We talk of
free variation if variation is not associated with positioning.