ABSTRACT
We have considered briefly both the mechanism which produces speech sounds and also some of the acoustic and auditory characteristics of the sounds themselves. It is now important to formulate a method of description and classification of the sound types which occur in speech and, more particularly, in English. We have seen that a speech sound has at least three stages available for investigations-the production, transmission and reception stages. A complete description of a sound would, therefore include information concerning all three stages. Describing the first sound in the word ten only in terms of the movements of the organs of speech is to ignore the acoustics of the sound which is produced and the features which are perceived by a listener. Nevertheless, providing all the information for all the phases would entail a lengthy description, much of which would be irrelevant to a particular purpose. For example, when a description of the sounds of a language is used in the teaching of a language to foreigners, the emphasis is principally focused on the articulatory event. Moreover, it is only comparatively recently that there has existed any considerable body of acoustic information concerning speech. The most convenient and brief descriptive technique continues to rely either on articulatory criteria or on auditory judgements, or on a combination of both. Thus, those sounds which are commonly known as ‘consonants’ are most easily described mainly in terms of their articulation, whereas the description of ‘vowel’ sounds requires a predominance of auditory impressions.
