Experimental phonetics is the branch of general phonetics that applies the experimental method to the study of sounds and other human speech units. This scientific field includes basic areas of phonetics: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory phonetics. Moreover, the experimental method is used to investigate numerous topics, including segmental phonetics (the study of the individual sounds, or phonemes, of a language) and suprasegmental phonetics (the study of nonsegmental features of a language, including stress, intonation, and timing, overlaid on segmental features). This entry first provides an overview of phonetics, then discusses topics studied in experimental phonetics research.