Читать книгу Applying Phonetics - Murray J. Munro - Страница 15

Speech is the most fundamental means of human communication. Nearly all of us—with the exception of the profoundly deaf and people with severe cognitive dysfunction—begin learning to speak during the early stages of childhood and continue to use spoken language as a mode of interaction. It is mainly through speech that we establish and develop our most important personal attachments, acquire the cultural competence that allows us to function as members of society, and pass on our wisdom to our offspring.

An especially fascinating aspect of speech is that it appears to be a uniquely human capability. Other social animals engage with their communities in a variety of ways, and we humans often talk affectionately to our canine and feline companions. But non‐human animals don't use anything quite like speech with one another; nor do they carry on spoken interactions with us. The importance of speech as a social tool and its status as a defining characteristic of humanness have made phonetics a dynamic and fruitful area of study since ancient times. In fact, the phonetician John Ohala (2006) suggests that phonetics may be the oldest of the behavioral sciences and, in many respects, one of the most successful. Its value is evident in the wide range of useful things we can do because of speech‐related research and technological innovations. You might not think of the telephone, for instance, as a product of phonetics, but its invention has revolutionized our lives because Alexander Graham Bell devoted his life to the study of speech. Even more impressive are today's artificial talking agents, which can read web pages aloud for people with visual disabilities and provide a voice to those who, like the late Stephen Hawking, have lost the ability to speak. The reverse situation is also becoming a practical reality in the form of computer applications that accept speech input and follow instructions to help us complete daily tasks. It is less well known to the public that criminal investigations sometimes employ forensic phonetics during the collection of evidence leading to the conviction of offenders. On the medical front, advances in the study of speech anatomy and physiology have led to effective remediation for many types of vocal tract injuries, language delays, and speech disorders. And with respect to language preservation and revitalization, linguists are able to apply phonetic principles along with speech technology to systematically document the sound patterns of endangered languages.