The term “phone”

[Ross C]

Is it correct to use “phone” for acoustic and/or auditory forms, or only for forms actually articulated as described in the IPA?

[Rebekka Puderbaugh]

“Phone” refers to sounds from an acoustic as well as an articulatory perspective. One way to think about phones is that they are directly related to the physical reality of the sound in some way, either its production or its acoustic properties. Although technically there are no acoustic definitions for IPA symbols, we use them as a shorthand for both acoustic and articulatory descriptions of speech. Importantly, phones are generally things that can be captured, recorded or measured directly. In contrast, the auditory sensation of the sound is more closely related to the notion of the phoneme, and involves perceptual judgments and categorizations that are more difficult to observe, requiring indirect observation via auditory perception experiments, behavioral tasks, or listener judgments.

[Ross C]

Thank you, I’ve got two questions leading on from the answer above.

1) Is it right to think of there being an infinite number of phones for each phoneme (both in the articulatory and acoustic realms) since two utterances of the same phone will never be precisely alike? Is there value in using three levels instead:
– phonemes
…which each map onto…
– phones we use for our analysis [like dental versus alveolar t]
…which each map onto…
– an infinite range of physical phones, with tiny physical differences which are of no use to the analysis

2) At what point does the signal become auditory in the sense mentioned above? For example, is it when it enters the cochlea, enters the brain, or something else?

[Rebekka Puderbaugh]

1) We could introduce all sorts of further levels of detail as you point out, which may or may not be useful. Here is a paper from Bob Ladd addressing a similar question about phonemic categories.

It’s also possible that phonemes and phones aren’t the “right” way to characterize linguistic structure in speech at all.

2) I don’t think this question has a straightforward answer. The process of hearing and then categorizing a sound has to involve the physical structures of the ear/cochlea/implant as well as the brain. Auditory research may focus on the physical mechanics of hearing, the perceptual result of hearing, or various combinations of the two.

If you’d like to browse some research in these areas you might consult the Speech Communication and Psychological and Physiological Acoustics sections of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The links above take you to the most recent issue but of course back issues are also worth perusing.

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