Acoustic Phonetics

Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds using instrumentation to measure and analyze sound waves. Pioneered by Peter Ladefoged and Kenneth Stevens, this method uses spectrograms, formant analysis, and waveform measurements to characterize vowels, consonants, and prosodic features with precision. Acoustic phonetics bridges the articulatory world of speech production and the perceptual world of listeners, providing objective, quantifiable data about how speech is produced and perceived.