ABSTRACT
PHONETICS as a subject of study is nowadays considered to be part of linguistics. But in departments of linguistics in universities it is still a subject with more autonomy than other areas, for various reasons: it is the only section of linguistics which deals almost entirely with the spoken language (the exception being the relationship between sounds and spellings); it is often heavily dependent on instruments and even more dependent on computers than other areas of language study; it depends on data more than other areas of linguistics; and it depends on scaled measurements more than other areas of linguistics.
