ABSTRACT
In attempting to choose a title that would accurately cover the broad range of topics in the book, we eventually decided on An Introduction to the Science of Phonetics. Much of the material in the book could go by the name of speech and hearing science. However, phonetics is a more inclusive name. It allows us to include a chapter on speech perception, the stage beyond hearing. It also implies a link to other aspects of language (phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics). Most important, it includes the tradition of systematic, trained auditory observation, which is the concern of the first section of this book. Even where this technique is not used alone (as it still is in many applications—in many applications in speech pathology, for example), it remains an important ingredient of the most successful work in phonetics/speech and hearing science.
