NYSTCE English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) Practice Test

Which of the following terms refers to the production of sounds in speech?

1. Phonology

2. Morphology

3. Phonetics

4. Syntactics

The correct answer is: Phonetics

The term that refers to the production of sounds in speech is phonetics. Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that studies the physical sounds of human speech. It focuses on how these sounds are articulated (produced by the vocal apparatus), transmitted (as sound waves), and perceived (by the ears). Phonetics breaks down into various areas such as articulatory phonetics, which examines how speech sounds are produced, and acoustic phonetics, which looks at the sound waves themselves. This makes phonetics essential for understanding the nuances of spoken language, including pronunciation and sound variation. In contrast, phonology deals with the abstract, cognitive aspects of sounds in language, such as how they function and interact within a particular language system. Morphology studies the structure and form of words, including the formation of different word parts (roots, prefixes, suffixes). Syntactics focuses on the rules that govern sentence structure and the arrangement of words within sentences. Therefore, phonetics is the term most closely associated with the actual production of speech sounds.