Chapter 3: Phonetics
A key aspect of any language is its physical reality in the world: how we transmit linguistic signals from one person to another. This chapter explores this physical reality by looking at the body parts used for language, how they move to create a linguistic signal, and how linguists categorize, describe, and notate these physical properties so they can record and access information about a language.
When you’ve completed this chapter, you’ll be able to:
- Identify the locations and functions of parts of the human anatomy relevant to the articulation of spoken and signed languages,
- Provide articulatory descriptions of given examples of phones and signs, and
- Identify the meanings of many common symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet.
