The Speech Chain

(from Denes & Pinson, 1993)

According to picture above, there are 5 levels in the speech chain, i.e. Linguistic Level
(Speaker Side), Physiological Level (Articulatory), Acoustic Level, Physiological Level
(Auditory), and Linguistic Level (Listener Side)

At linguistic level (speaker side), human will select, combine, and order suitable words into
suitable sentences. Note that words are comprised of syllables and syllables are comprised
of phonemes. Then, the ‘state’ move to physiological level (articulatory), which will
involve neural and muscular activity, based on the input signal (phoneme) from the
previous ‘state’. The muscular activity will form the articulator in a certain shape, so that
the vocal tract for a specific phoneme is formed. The ‘state’ moves to acoustic level when
there is air flowing through the vocal tract from the lungs. At this level, speech sound wave
is generated and then transmitted on the medium of air. When the speech sound wave
reaches listener’s ears, the ‘state’ moves to physiological level (auditory). The incoming
wave will activates the hearing mechanism, which then involve neural activity in the
hearing and perceptual mechanism. The speech chain is completed on the linguistic level
(listener Side) when the listener recognizes the words and sentences produced by the
speaker.

Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. From the explanation about speech chain above,
we know that there are 3 levels which are correspond with speech sounds, i.e. physiological
level (articulatory), acoustic level, and physiological level (auditory). Therefore, there are 3
subfields of Phonetics, i.e. Articulatory Phonetics, Acoustic Phonetics, and Auditory
Phonetics.
Articulatory Phonetics talks about how speech sounds are produced and how we classify
and transcribe speech sounds. Acoustic Phonetics talks about how speech sounds are
described acoustically and the acoustic properties of speech sounds. And, Auditory
Phonetics talks about how speech sounds are received and perceived.