Gussenhoven presents us with a clear biological overview of the lungs, larynx and vocal tract, and the ways these three interact to produce the plethora of phonetic sounds that comprise speech. Two components of the chapter were of particular interest. First, it seems remarkable that such a strong variety of sounds can be produced from organs that Gussenhoven explicitly states “have primary biological functions”. That humans have been able to use the glottis, pharynx, nasal cavity, mouth and other breathing-related components to speak is in many ways surprising, and the articulations of how they have been repurposed for the goal of speech are fascinating. Second, the contention that speech is merely a side-benefit of the breathing organs seems unpersuasive to me. Rather, it seems entirely plausible that given two breathing systems of equivalent efficacy, one of which enabled a greater variety of phonetics, evolution would preference the latter over the former system, especially since communication is essential to allowing any communities of humans larger than a few dozen to survive. In this way, the ingenious construction of the human speech system might be more easily explained.
Kenstowicz, meanwhile, illustrates the implausibility of a single-level phonetic model, given the extent to which speakers see distinct sounds as identical written form, yet also single out or mark as ‘odd’ those who do not observe linguistic convention (ex. the difference between “writer” and “rider”). I agree with the paper’s contention that single-level models cannot hold up; they rely on all derivative words of a given word being pronounced similarly, which always has exceptions (even prefixes sometimes change the pronunciation of a word, ex. “kilometer”).The question then begged is why humans choose to mark sounds that they recognize as different in speech with the same letters. Two possible explanations arise. The first is one of simplicity: it is easy enough to absorb the contextual nuances that make “t” sound aspirated, retroflexed, flapped, glottalized or otherwise. The second builds on the evolutionary argument in the prior paragraph: it might be useful for cultures or societies to have contextual markers that are difficult to pick up from any mechanism other than continual linguistic interaction, because then it becomes easy to tell who is ‘native’ to a region and who is new. We can hypothesize that contextual pronunciations are a signaling mechanism for groups to be able to maintain coherency.
Hi Harry! The Kenstowicz reading definitely made me think of a similar question to yours ("why humans choose to mark sounds that they recognize as different in speech with the same letter") and I definitely think that simplicity is a major reason for this occurrence and I would be willing to go so far as to say that laziness is what causes this to happen. It seems like pronouncing each letter as it should sound would take more time and thought so we've just dropped the need to do so in many instances. Like Kenstowicz mentioned, we need to adhere to certain rules to be able to correctly speak a given language but could it possibly be that these rules are just each languages way of putting less effort into their spoken words? Just thinking out loud. Great blog post though. I thought it was really interesting.
ReplyDeleteHi Harry! Like you (and Danya), I was intrigued by the oft overlooked disconnect between spelling and pronunciation that Kenstowicz highlights and wished to contribute my own musings to the theories you advance. When reading your post, I was reminding of how English seems in many ways to be a melting pot language: its roots stem from Germanic, French, and Latin influences, and it has additionally absorbed words from many other languages. I wonder if lexical borrowing, our habit of absorbing new words from other languages, has contributed to the lack of standardization. It’s interesting to keep in mind, too, that standardization of spelling wasn’t always a thing, and even when words were standardized, they were sometimes reverted to less intuitive spellings. For example, “doute” became “doubt” in the 16th century to link it to the Latin “dubitare.” This suggests that we might not be able to explain away spellings through laziness.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to your evolutionary argument that societies with unintuitive pronunciations might have gained a selective advantage from being able to identify outsiders from their linguistic stumbles, whether or not these quirks played a historical role in the evolution of their respective languages, they have certainly been employed for that purpose. The term “shibboleth” refers to a word whose different pronunciations can differentiate members of a group from outsiders, and throughout history various shibboleths have been used to discover members of enemy groups to often violent ends. My father lived in Scheveningen when he was little, and the Dutch town’s name was so difficult to pronounce that it was used to discover German spies during World War II. In a more dramatic incident, the same phoneme was used as a shibboleth during the 1302 Matins of Bruges, a nocturnal revolt during which revels murdered 2,000 French suspects who failed to pronounce the phrase “schild en vriend" ("shield and friend").