I. Define acoustic phonetics.

II. Espouse advances in studies of acoustic

phonetics leading to technological breakthrough
in speech science.
III. Describe the physical properties of speech such
as frequency, intensity, duration, timbre, and
quality.
IV. Relate acoustic phonetics to language acquisition
and development.
 Is a subfield of phonetics and studies the
acoustic characteristics of speech,
including analysis and description of
speech in terms of its physical properties,
such as frequency, intensity, and duration,
and the relationship of these properties to
other branches of phonetics
(e.g. articulatory or auditory phonetics), and
to abstract linguistic concepts like phones,
phrases, or utterances

 is an instrumental science that depends

on ways to store, replicate, visualize, and
analyze the speech signal.
 Edison phonograph -this allowed the speech
signal to be recorded and then later processed
and analyzed
 telephone industry- Alexander Graham Bell's
father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a phonetician.
work at the Bell Telephone Laboratories (which
invented the spectrograph) greatly facilitated the
systematic study of the spectral properties
of periodic and aperiodic speech sounds, vocal
tract resonances and vowel formants, voice
quality, prosody, etc
 .Lord Rayleigh was among the
first to recognize that the new
electric theory could be used
in acoustics, but it was not
until 1941 that the circuit
model was effectively used, in
a book by Chiba and Kajiyama
called "The Vowel: Its Nature
and Structure".
 In 1952, Roman Jakobson, Gunnar
Fant, and Morris Halle wrote
"Preliminaries to Speech Analysis", a
seminal work tying acoustic phonetics
and phonological theory together.
This little book was followed in 1960
by Fant "Acoustic Theory of Speech
Production", which has remained the
major theoretical foundation for
speech acoustic research in both the
academy and industry
 Acoustic Phonetics is concerned of
speech sounds

Timbre Intensity

Duration Frequency
 frequency (Hz) = number of cycles / time
(sec)

 In the image, assuming that the horizontal

axis represents time in seconds, we see that
1 cycle occurs in about 6.25 seconds. Using
the formula for frequency, we can determine
that this wave has a frequency of 0.16 Hz.
 frequency (Hz) = 1 (number of cycles) / 6.25
(time in seconds) = 0.16 Hz
 Humans can typically hear from 0 dB
to 120 dB, at which point sound is
painfully perceived. Loudness of
sound can be affected by distance as
well as the composition of the
propagating medium - the more
efficient the propagating medium, the
louder the sound.
 That is, the timbre of a sound
is what makes it possible for
us to differentiate one sound
from the next and combine
different sounds to
communicate different
meanings using language.
 Howcan you relate
acoustic phonetics to
language acquisition and
development?
 Acoustic
Phonetics is a
tool towards learning the
fundamentals of
language.
No one can understand a
specific language without
accustoming its speech
sound characteristics:
intensity (amplitude),
frequency, timbre, and the
quality .
E.g. Children learn to
speak their native
language because
they hear it. Hearing
leads speech
development.