Talk:Phonetics

Source on History of Phonetics

The edited volume A guide to the history of the phonetic sciences in the United States contains a number of papers describing the history of phonetics which may be of use for the section in this article and/or a potential spin-off article. While only covering the history in the United States, it points to some additional resources for developments of historical interest elsewhere as well. I believe anyone should have access to the pdf copy, but if you need access to a particular section to improve the Wikipedia article, get in touch and I can help you get access. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 20:48, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

MacMahon (2013) is also a good source on the history of phonetics outside the United States appearing in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics. I posted this on the DYK nom page, but more people are likely to see it here. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 17:54, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

No mention of vowels or radical consonants

This article describes consonants pretty well, but it completely neglects vowels. There should be a main section for vowels explaining how they differ from consonants and how vowels can differ from each other (height, backness, lip position, nasality, etc.) Diphthongs should also be treated, along with a sentence explaining the difference between vowels and semivowels/glides.

Consonants are described well, but there's no mention any place of articulation beyond uvular. I would recommend adding a separate subsection for radicals where pharyngeal, epiglottal and glottal consonants are described.--Megaman en m (talk) 14:31, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree. I've moved the article to C-class to reflect that it has significant gaps in coverage. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 18:55, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I would also like to add that while sign languages are acknowledged in the lead, there should be a section dedicated to them. Important topics to be covered include handshape, location, movement and orientation. Additional topics include the existence of two-handed signs and an explanation of the dominance and symmetry conditions.--Megaman en m (talk) 16:24, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

It would probably be best to do a summary of the existing Sign language#Linguistics section with a {{main}} link since these topics are treated more extensively there. Phonetics of sign languages is not without controversy and is definitely not a large portion of the phonetics literature which for most of its history and still now focuses on acoustics. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 17:47, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Added a basic section on vowels, needless to say there's a lot of room left for expansion. I also just noticed that the article doesn't describe manners of articulation at all (other than randomly mentioning it once in the section on coronals). Added it to the to-do list.--Megaman en m (talk) 07:53, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Added radicals. More information on the difference/confusion between pharyngeals and epiglottals could be added.--Megaman en m (talk) 18:53, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Practical phonetics

Another omission in this article is any mention of the importance of training in practical phonetics, which has been at the heart of the study of phonetics (in Europe at least), for over a century. An account of this would fit reasonably well in the Subfields section. I did write a piece for WP on this topic some time ago (which can be read here) but it was rejected by the reviewer - someone might like to use it as a basis for a short paragraph on the topic. RoachPeter (talk) 11:01, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I added practical phonetics to the list of subfields using your website as a source. Self-published sources aren't usually allowed, but it should be acceptable here considering you're an expert in the field and the fact I couldn't actually find another reliable source with a concise description of what practical phonetics is.--Megaman en m (talk) 07:49, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this in hand. I'm sorry to be awkward, but I don't think it's in the right place yet: putting it in a list with the intro "Phonetic insight is used in a number of applied linguistic fields" suggests that practical phonetics is merely an application of the subject, like pronunciation teaching, but for most of the last 120 years students being taught phonetics in the European tradition have been trained in practical phonetics as an essential prerequisite for understanding the rest of the subject. My own preference (being old-fashioned in this way) would be to have a whole section of the WP article on this topic, but I know this is unlikely to be acceptable, which is why I suggested the "Subfields" route. So I would prefer it if the topic had its own place as a third subfield. RoachPeter (talk) 11:32, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Can't practical phonetics be taught separately outside the field of phonetics proper? I admit I'm not familiar with this topic. Regardless, I'm not sure how to go about incorporating it if it's not to be placed under the applied linguistics section of the subfields head. Would it be possible for you to edit the article in your own way? If not, maybe you could write a draft and either post it here or on my talk page.--Megaman en m (talk) 17:21, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

I removed it from the subfields section and added a paragraph on it in the "History" section. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 19:33, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

From my highly subjective old-fashioned German-Chinese point of view practical phonetics is still the indispensable foundation for doing phonetics and phonology. At least I have never seen a machine or an app that was able to reliably transcribe speech in a huge number of random languages and dialects. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:48, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Neither my undergraduate nor graduate programs had cardinal vowel training, and I've learned that my undergraduate program has since removed production of the IPA from its curriculum (my graduate program didn't have it to begin with). The bulk of publications on practical phonetics are from before the 1960s and those recent publications are mostly in the domain of applied linguistics. The paragraph in the history section is the most discussion I'd support giving as wikipedia is not a textbook or how-to guide. Readers coming to this page are not concerned with whether or how phoneticians learn to do phonetics but rather an overview of the theories and findings of the field. Practical phonetics is only relevant to the article with regards to its role in the development of the field and its theories and extensive discussion of it would be better suited for phonetic transcription or a new practical phonetics page. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 20:18, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Spinoff?

@Megaman en m and Nardog: since you both have been active on this article lately (but obviously any page watchers are welcome to weigh in too). The article is getting rather long (and once vowel content is added, will be getting longer), and I've been thinking about moving some of the content to main articles like consonants or places of articulation and then summarizing the content here to try and get the length down. On the other hand I think the article is a really comprehensive overview of the topic and there may not be much gain from the spinoffs. Thoughts? Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 18:30, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't feel the article is too long, however it is extremely unbalanced. Though I like articulatory phonetics very much, there are other domains that deserve more than passing mention, especially the acoustics of speech and speech perception. Also speech recognition and synthesis are important for understanding modern digital life, I think. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 20:03, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I would also like a section on speech acoustics and perception, although I'm not sure I have even knowledge about it to do it justice. I feel that speech recognition and synthesis should be mentioned in the lead, but expanded upon in its own article.

For my thoughts on the article: I haven't gotten to considering page length yet, but phonetics is a pretty extensive topic, it might get pretty long indeed. The current subsections in places of articulation are pretty detailed, some of the information might be better off in their own separate articles. Maybe the manner of articulation section could be collapsed into one or two paragraphs? It looks kind of silly to have each manner have their own header, but then again it's important to clearly differentiate them to the reader. The voicing and phonation types section could maybe be a bit shorter if needed. I don't know enough about the information in the anatomy and articulatory models section to say what should stay and what should be split. The subfields, relation to phonology and transcription section could be scrapped and incorporated in the lead, killing two birds with one stone. Those are my ideas for shortening it.

As it stands now I think the article's length is perfectly manageable, and I don't think it'll get unbearable if some additional subjects get fleshed out. Clicks, ejectives and implosives definitely still need a mention, and short section on what categories are needed to describe a sign in sign languages is also needed. The section on vowels could easily become too detailed, not sure what topics should be covered in this article.--Megaman en m (talk) 20:31, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree. And what also definitely needs mention is prosody: initiatory prosody (stress; how about rhythm?), phonatory prosody (intonation and tone), and articulatory prosody (segmental length). Those are indispensable for English phonetics, too. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:00, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I added speech acoustics and prosody to the to-do list. I'll continue working on articulatory phonetics for now until there's a decent base since that's what I'm most familiar with.--Megaman en m (talk) 07:09, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

This is rather tangential, but for some time I've found the articles Articulatory phonetics and Articulation (phonetics) quite redundant. This article also cover articulatory phonetics at moderate length, while there are also Manner of articulation and Place of articulation, and I feel we could use less of repeating the same things in so many different places and more of assembling them into fewer articles. Nardog (talk) 16:15, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Those two articles do seem pretty samey, maybe we should just merge them? The manner of articulation and place of articulation articles seem fine in contrast to the page on phonetics. Some information is bound to be repeated, the main difference should be the amount of detail dedicated to it in each article.--Megaman en m (talk) 09:03, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

I think you both raise really good points. By spinoff I didn't so much mean create new articles as use the content here to improve existing articles, but I think Nardog, you make a good point that a number of articles could benefit from mergers. I think that would be a worthwhile task if you had any other examples that you've noticed. As for the two articles you mentioned, given the three of us seem to think they would benefit from merger, I'll get started on that process. As for this article repeating the same thing, I agree with Megaman that some amount of repetition is expected, but I think the structural problems they rightly point out are a major cause of the problems Nardog has.contribute to part of the repetition problems. Fixing the sectioning of the article would probably help resolve a lot of those issues. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 06:20, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Went ahead and merged some of the smaller sections into the lead as mentioned before. Any other ideas on how to improve the sectioning?--Megaman en m (talk) 09:32, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for merging the two, Wugapodes. Yeah, I'm not actually arguing for a merger of the rest of the articles; having summaries in the articles about broader topics and pointing to more specific articles via {{main}} is the way to go I think. Nardog (talk) 13:42, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Desired level of detail

Right now there is a big level of difference between the detailed place of articulation section and the minimal description of manner of articulations to the point where it's jarring. They should both have the same level of detail, but should we add more detail to the manner of articulations or remove some detail from place of articulations and rely on the main article for the details?--Megaman en m (talk) 14:25, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

I kind of solved the problem by just grouping all the places of articulation under one big header, without sub-headers. Still doesn't look perfect, but it's a lot better.--Megaman en m (talk) 12:20, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Acoustic phonetic section

Added a section on acoustics and auditory phonetics. I know pretty much nothing about the subject, I just read Keith Johnson (2003) and put in bits I thought were important. It's a start at least. I'll add more once I read more of the book. If anyone with actual expertise in this area is willing to improve – or better yet – expand this section, it would be greatly appreciated.--Megaman en m (talk) 20:33, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Overview sections and structure more generally

After the history section, there should probably be two more sections—"Speech Production" and "Speech perception"—which give broadly accessible overviews of these two processes. Sedivy (2019)'s psycholinguistics text book has chapters on speech production and perception that does a very good job of explaining these, and would probably be useful for writing an overview. It also has a wonderful flow chart of the process of articulation and audition that I may adapt for the article when I have the time.

More generally, I think the structure of the article could use some explicit thinking through. The article needs a better introduction, right now the most intro the reader gets is a history of the field which is why the sections on production and perception would help a lot. Secondly, the division of "anatomy" and "describing sounds" while a better organization than previously, still isn't great. I think these two large sections should actually be merged, both into each other and into their parent articles. Essentially, rather than answering the questions "what are the parts of the vocal tract" and "how do we describe sounds", it is better to present the reader with the questions such as "how are phones articulated" and "What is the relationship between vocal tract shape and acoustics". I think the article already has answers to these questions, the prose just needs to be reworked some.

This has the added benefit of helping resolve the level of detail problem: speech prodction and perception sections would give a broad overview for readers just wanting the gist of the process, and this new block of "major research questions" would go into greater detail about the different parts of the process for readers wanting greater detail. We could then end it, as we already sort of do, with some sections on "Special topics" that give summaries of major theories in the field like motor theory, articulatory phonetics, exemplar theory, etc. — Wug·a·po·des​ 13:08, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

A general classification of consonant and vowel sounds of speech

Russian multidisciplinary researcher and inventor Alexander K. Makeyev does developed a general classification of consonant and vowel sounds-signs of speech-thinking. There are 6 types of sounds-signs of speech-thinking are distributed across 6 types in 5 zones of physiologically optimal (elementary) articulations. 95.27.231.251 (talk) 23:05, 12 May 2020 (UTC)