Phonetics as a Linguistic Science

Abstract

Speech sounds and prosodic features serve to differentiate the units they form. Communication by means of language is possible only because speech sounds (and prosodic features) can be opposed to one another for purposes of differentiating words, word forms, and communicative units-utterances. Simultaneously all the sound phenomena provide a basis for the hearer to identify them as concrete words, word forms or utterances. Physiological phonetics is concerned with the study of speech sounds as physiological phenomena.