Republic of Iraq

Minister of Higher Education

And Scientific Research
University of Baghdad
College of Education for Women

Auditory features

By

Shahad Qahtan Abdulameer

Auditory phonetics is that branch of phonetics concerned with the perception of speech
sounds, i.e. with how they are heard. ... Indeed, there may be no clear distinction made by
some speech-perception researchers between aspects of acoustic and auditory
phonetics due to the fact that the two fields are so closely related.

There is no direct connection between auditory sensations and the physical properties of
sound that give rise to them. While the physical (acoustic) properties are objectively
measurable, auditory sensations are subjective and can only be studied by asking
listeners to report on their perceptions.
They show some correspondences between physical properties and auditory
sensations.If articulatory phonetics studies the way in which speech sounds are produced,
auditory phonetics focuses on the perception of sounds or the way in which sounds are
heard and interpreted. Thus, we may say that while articulatory phonetics is mainly
concerned with the speaker, auditory phonetics deals with the other important participant
in verbal communication, the listener.It is again, obviously, a field of linguistic study which
has to rely heavily on biology and more specifically on anatomy and physiology. In auditory
phonetics, we are dealing with two distinct operations which are closely interrelated and
influence each other: on one hand we can talk about audition proper, that is the perception
of sounds by our auditory apparatus and the transforming of the information into a neural
sign and its sending to the brain and, on the other hand, we can talk about the analysis of
this information by the brain which eventually leads to the decoding of the message, the
understanding of the verbal message.
As a beginner however, it will be sufficient for you to get a basic idea of how our auditory
system and the general hearing process work. read through the brief description that
follows.
Keeping it very simple, we can state, that any sound coming from any source, be it a door
slamming or someone speaking to you, is spreading from that source as a sound wave,
causing the molecules on its way to crowd together and move apart again or in other
words, to vibrate. When these vibrating air molecules reach your ear, they cause the
eardrum in your middle ear to vibrate, too and this vibration is then carried on from the
eardrum to the three little bones: mallet, incus and stirrup.

From the stirrup, the vibration is carried on to the inner ear, and into the cochlea, a little
coil-like organ filled with liquid. Inside the cochlea there are two membranes: the vestibular
membrane and the basilar membrane. It is the latter that plays a central role in the act of
audition, because this is, where the auditory receptor cells are located.

Depending on the frequency of the sound coming in, a different part with different receptor
cells of the basilar membrane is stimulated. Thus, low-frequency (grave) sounds will make
the membrane vibrate at the less stiff (upper) end, while high-frequency (acute) sounds will
cause the lower and stiffer end of the membrane to vibrate. The cells on the basilar
membrane convert these vibrations into neural signals that are transmitted via the auditory
nerves to the central receptor and controller of the entire process, the brain, where we
identify the incoming sound as actual sound with a specific pitch.

You can now move on to do some exercises within the field of auditory phonetics, or you
can click on the "read more" button, in case you want a detailed description of how the
human hearing process works. It is distinct from articulatory phonetics which involves the
study of the ways in which speech sounds are produced by the vocal organs , and from
acoustic phonetics which involves the analysis of the speech signal primarily by means of
instrumentation. In fact, however, issues in auditory phonetics are often explored with
reference to articulatory and acoustic phonetics. Indeed, there may be no clear distinction
made by some speech-perception researchers between aspects of acoustic and auditory
phonetics due to the fact that the two fields are so closely related.Auditory is close
in meaning to acoustic and acoustical, but auditory usually refers more to hearing than to
sound. For instance, many dogs have great auditory (not acoustic) powers, and
the auditory nerve lets us hear by connecting the inner ear to the brain.The auditory
system transforms sound waves into distinct patterns of neural activity, which are then
integrated with information from other sensory systems to guide behavior, including
orienting movements to acoustical stimulation and communication.If there is a distinction
to be made between auditory phonetics and speech perception, it is that the former is
more closely associated with traditional non-instrumental approaches to phonology and
other aspects of linguistics, while the latter is closer to experimental, laboratory-based
study. Consequently, the term auditory phonetics is often used to refer to the study of
speech without the use of instrumental analysis.