Articulatory Phonetics

Definition

Articulatory phonetics is the subfield of phonetics that investigates the ways humans produce speech. The ways humans use their vocal tract to create different sounds is referred to as articulation. A more detailed look into the components of human’s vocal tracts can be found here.

Articulatory phonetics allows linguists to describe sounds in terms of their voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation, which is often studied in the field of articulatory phonetics. A more detailed description of voicing, place, and manner can be found here.

Articulatory phonetics can also be a useful tool in language revitalization, as it can be used as a way of teaching languages as well as learning the pronunciation of different sounds found throughout Indigenous languages (Bliss et al., To appear, p. 4). Tools such as ultrasound