D's and T's: Understanding the Basis for Phonetic Variation

The Gussenhoven and Kenstowicz articles create a strong basis for phonetics, when read together, in that order. The first provides foundational knowledge for understanding speech production and the biomechanical reason for sound variation, while the latter points out specific phonetic variations in the English language.

Gussenhoven discusses the mechanics of speech production in his paper. He elaborates on the biological parts that create variations in sound, pitch, and articulation. He explains the production of all phonetic sounds in language by articulating how the different vocal apparatuses interact along with the movement of breath and the mouth. He introduces many terms of linguistic jargon with which I am just starting to gain familiarity.

Kenstowicz’s paper depends on the familiarity with the biomechanics of sound production that Gussenhoven explains. His paper dives into the specifics of phonology and sound variation that native speakers find difficult to distinguish. One comment that I found to be intriguing is his acknowledgment that these phonetic variations are never explicitly taught to us as English speakers, but rather learned when learning to speak. While reading this article, I vocalized many of the words on the page, trying to understand these variations by saying them aloud. One example I found most interesting was the pluralization of “tent” and “tend.” My “tents” sounds like “tense,” and I’ve never thought about the deletion of the [t] before, though as a camp counselor I’ve said that word thousands of times.

As a student of both German and Hindi, I found the articulation of the many “t” and “d” sounds particularly interesting, especially the idea of “flapping.” I became aware of glottal stops when learning German, as I had difficulty understanding the pronunciation of many words. The native English speaker’s unconsciousness to the many allophones of the same phoneme (“t” sound) is fascinating, as someone who has tried to speak Hindi. As Gussenhoven notes, Hindi has many unique letters and sounds for aspirated and non-aspirated, d’s and t’s. When I first was learning the language, I could not distinguish between the two, and still have difficulty with fast-paced speech. I’m now very attuned to variations in the [t] sound, so learning that the English language has many forms of this sound was surprising to me, because I have never before heard the words “atom” and “bottle” as having two distinct phonological sounds.

After reading these two papers, I am left with a few questions about language acquisition and a person’s ability to create new vowel and consonant shapes with the mouth in order to produce different variations of sound. When I break down the production of linguistic sounds to merely changing positions of the lips, tongue, teeth, pharynx, and vocal chords, it becomes clear to me that producing different accents of regional sound variation is almost like learning new muscular choreography for the vocal tract and mouth.