What is phonetics the study of?

Phonetics is specifically the study of the sounds made during speech, which encompasses the production, transmission, and perception of these sounds. This field examines how speech sounds are articulated by humans (articulatory phonetics), how they travel through the air (acoustic phonetics), and how they are processed by the listener's auditory system (auditory phonetics).

The focus of phonetics is primarily on the physical aspects of speech sounds, rather than the meanings or structures of those sounds within a language. This differentiates it from areas like phonology, which looks at how sounds function within a particular language, and morphology, which examines the structure and formation of words. Hence, the emphasis on speech sounds distinctly positions phonetics apart from other linguistic branches, making option B the accurate representation of what phonetics entails.