Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign.

Phonetics has three major branches: (1) Articulatory Phonetics (2) Auditory Phonetics (3) Acoustic Phonetics.Articulatory phonetics studies how the outgoing airstream is regulated along the vocal tract to form various speech sounds. Auditory Phonetics studies how speech sounds are heard and perceived. This galls for a close study of the psychology of perception on the one hand, and the mechanism of the neuro-muscular circuitry on the other.Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds such as frequency and amplitude in their transmission. Acoustic phoneticians analyse the speech waves with the help of instruments, attempt to describe the physical properties of the stream of sound issues forth from the mouth of a speaker.

Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages. It has traditionally focused largely on study of the systems of phonemes in particular languages, but it may also cover any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word or at all levels of language where sound is considered to be structured for conveying linguistic meaning. Phonology also includes the study of equivalent organizational systems in sign languages.

The difference between phonetics and phonology is that of generality and particularity. Whereas phonetics is the science of speech sounds, their production, transmission and reception and the signs to represent them in general with no particular reference to any one phonology is the study of vocal sounds and sound changes, phonemes and their variants, in a particular language. The subject-matter of phonology is the selected phonetic material from the total resources available to human beings from phonetics. The human vocal system can produce a very large number of different speech sounds. In Phonology, the central concept is that of phoneme – the minimal meaningful sound unit and the intonation and stress patterns of a language. Also phonetics is more theoretical while phonology is more practical.

Phonosemantics is a branch of psycholinguistics. It is based on the assumption that every sound and every letter may be pleasant or unpleasant, round or sharp, hot or cold. The results of the experiments in phonosemantics show how the phonetic forms of brand names or trademarks are correlated with the commercial product they represent.
9. PARTS OF SPEECH

PROBLEM OF CLASSIFICATION

Parts of speech are the great taxonomic classes into which all the words of a language fall.

It will be more in accord with the nature of language to say that parts of speech — must be identified proceeding from:

1) a common categorial meaning of a given class of words abstracted from the lexical meaning of all the words belonging to this class;

2) a common paradigm and

3) identity of syntactic functions.

The attitude of grammarians with regard to parts of speech and the basis of their classification has varied a good deal at different times. Some modern grammarians maintain that the only criterion of their classification should be the form of words.

Grammatical categories identifying the parts of speech are known to be expressed in paradigms. We generally distinguish inflectional and analytical types of the paradigm. In the former the invariable part is the stem, in the latter the lexical element of the paradigm. The so-called interparadigmatic homonymy resulting from the fact that the root, the stem and the grammatical form of the word may be identical in sound, is most frequent. Newspaper headlines very frequently are structurally ambiguous because of the lack of definite part-of-speech or form-class markers. Some typical examples out of many are the following:

(1) "Vandenberg Reports Open Forum". The ambiguity of this heading could be cleared by the use of such markers as the or an, as: 'Vandenberg Reports Open the Forum', 'Vandenberg Reports an Open Forum'. (2) "Unfavourable Surveyor Reports delayed Michigan Settlement". The ambiguity of this heading would be cleared by the use of such markers as have or a 'Unfavourable Surveyor Reports Have delayed Michigan Settlement'; 'Unfavourable Surveyor Reports a Delayed Michigan Settlement' .

The four major parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) set up by the process of substitution in С h. Fries' recorded material are given no names except numbers: class 1, class 2, class 3, class 4. Assumptions have been made by Ch. Fries that all words which can occupy the same "set of positions" in the patterns of English single free utterances must belong to the same part of speech ². These four classes make up the "bulk"of functioning units in structural patterns of English. Then come fifteen groups of so-called function words, which have certain characteristic in common. In the mere matter of number of items the fifteen groups differ sharply from the four classes. In the four large classes, Ch. Fries points out, the lexical meanings of the words depend on the arrangement in which these words appear. In function-words it is usually difficult if not impossible to indicate a lexical meaning apart from the structural meaning which these words signal.

The new approach — the application of two of the methods of structural linguistics, distributional analysis and substitution — makes it possible for Ch. Fries to dispense with the usual eight parts of speech. He classifies words, as may be seen from the extracts into four "form-classes", designated by numbers, and fifteen groups of "function words", designated by letters. The form-classes correspond roughly to what most grammarians call nouns and pronouns, verbs, adjective and adverbs, though Ch. Fries especially warns the reader against the attempt to translate the statements which the latter finds in the book into the old grammatical terms. The group of function words contains not only prepositions and conjunctions, but also certain specific words that most traditional grammarians would class as a particular kind of pronouns, adverbs and verbs.

Other modern grammarians retain the traditional names of parts of speech, though the methods they use to identify the various parts of speech, the number of them and the distribution of words among them are all different from what is found in traditional grammar. They also exclude function words from the classification of parts of speech and give them entirely separate treatment ¹.

Setting aside function words and observing the remaining words as they are combined into utterances with clear and unambiguous structural meaning, W. Francis finds it necessary to identify four different parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective and adverb. In his analysis nouns are identified, for instance, by five formal criteria, some more important than others. The most common noun-marking signal is a group of function words called noun-determiners. These precede the nouns they mark, either immediately or with certain types of words between; nouns have inflections; many nouns may be identified as such by various noun-marking derivational suffixes; nouns fill certain characteristic positions in relation to other identified parts of speech in phrases and utterances, etc. Verb-marking criteria as given by W.Francis are the following: inflections, function words, derivational affixes, positions and "superfixes", і. e. "morphological" stress in cases like import — to import; contract — to contract; perfect — to perfect, etc.

English school grammars deal extensively with the parts of speech, usually given as eight in number and explained in definitions that have become traditional. It had long been considered that these eight parts of speech — noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection — are basic classifications that can be applied to the words of any language and that the traditional definition furnishes an adequate set of criteria by which the classification can be made.

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