"Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign."
The study of the production, transmission, reception, and perception of speech sounds.
Phonology: The sound system of a language including sounds, syllables, and stress patterns.
Orthography: The writing system of a language including the structure and representation of letters or symbols for pronunciation.
Grammar: The set of rules governing the structure and usage of a language.
Morphology: The study of the internal structure of words, including the formation of words and their parts.
Syntax: The study of how words are combined into sentences and phrases in a language.
Semantics: The meaning and interpretation of words and phrases.
Pragmatics: The study of how language is used in context and its effects on the listener or reader.
Language Evolution: The history and development of a language including how it has changed and evolved over time.
Language Acquisition: How individuals learn and develop their language skills, including first and second language acquisition.
Language Universals: Common features or structures found in all human languages.
International Auxiliary Languages: These are language systems created with the aim of facilitating communication between speakers of different native languages. Examples include Esperanto, Interlingua, and Volapük.
Logical Languages: These are constructed languages developed with the objective of precision and clarity in logic, formal reasoning, and scientific communication. Examples include Lojban, Ithkuil, and Loglan.
Personal Languages: These are designed by one person to be used by that person – often as a way of personal expression rather than communication with others.
Engineered Languages: These are languages created for practical purposes, such as computer programming, artificial intelligence, or encryption.
Experimental Languages: These are constructed languages created as a means of artistic expression or experimentation. Examples include Blissymbols, Solresol, and Toki Pona.
Philosophical Languages: These are constructed languages designed to explore philosophical concepts or principles. Examples include Ro, E-Prime, and Glosa.
Fictional Languages: These are languages created for fictional worlds (e.g., Tolkien's Elvish, Klingon from Star Trek, and Dothraki from Game of Thrones) to add depth and authenticity to their portrayals.
"The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines based on the research questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech (articulatory phonetics), how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound (acoustic phonetics), or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information (auditory phonetics)."
"The phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones, and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language."
"Languages with oral-aural modalities such as English produce speech orally (using the mouth) and perceive speech aurally (using the ears). Sign languages, such as Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and American Sign Language (ASL), have a manual-visual modality, producing speech manually (using the hands) and perceiving speech visually (using the eyes)."
"Language production consists of several interdependent processes which transform a non-linguistic message into a spoken or signed linguistic signal. After identifying a message to be linguistically encoded, a speaker must select the individual words—known as lexical items—to represent that message in a process called lexical selection."
"During phonological encoding, the mental representation of the words is assigned their phonological content as a sequence of phonemes to be produced."
"These phonemes are then coordinated into a sequence of muscle commands that can be sent to the muscles, and when these commands are executed properly the intended sounds are produced."
"The modification is done by the articulators, with different places and manners of articulation producing different acoustic results. For example, the words tack and sack both begin with alveolar sounds in English, but differ in how far the tongue is from the alveolar ridge."
"The most common airstream mechanism is pulmonic—using the lungs—but the glottis and tongue can also be used to produce airstreams."
"Language perception is the process by which a linguistic signal is decoded and understood by a listener."
"In order to perceive speech, the continuous acoustic signal must be converted into discrete linguistic units such as phonemes, morphemes, and words."
"Listeners prioritize certain aspects of the signal that can reliably distinguish between linguistic categories."
"While certain cues are prioritized over others, many aspects of the signal can contribute to perception. For example, though oral languages prioritize acoustic information, the McGurk effect shows that visual information is used to distinguish ambiguous information when the acoustic cues are unreliable." Quotes were not provided for questions 11-13 as they do not have specific quotes associated with them.