The study of the characteristics of speech sounds is called phonetics.Â
There is an already established analytic framework for the study of speech segments that has been developed and refined for over a hundred years and is known as the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA .
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. There are three main branches:
Articulatory phonetics: How speech sounds are produced.
Acoustic phonetics: The physical properties of speech sounds as sound waves.
Auditory phonetics: The perception of speech sounds by the ear.