Four, Death, and the HIdden Rules of Language

In the Gussenhoven article, the author details the physical attributes that humans possess that allow us to create the sounds necessary for a spoken language. The author mainly describes the role of the lungs, larynx, vocal tract, and the ways in how they differentiate words originating from varying languages. On the other hand, in the Kenstowicz article, the author writes about the ways that words that are phonetically different, but still sound identical to native speakers. Kenstowicz expands upon this with several solutions as to why this phenomenon occurs.

Gussenhoven categorizes languages into two separate areas, pulmonic, and egressive. Pulmonic languages use the exhalation phase to speak while egressive languages use the inhalation phase. For pulmonic languages, air originates from the lungs and passes through the larynx, vocal cords, pharynx, mouth, and sometimes the nasal cavity. Along the way the air is shaped by each body part, especially by the mouth, until it comes out as a whisper, a breathy voice, or a creaky voice. The amount the vocal folds open and close in a second is called frequency while the different variations of it is called pitch. Pitch can mean a lot in tone languages such as Chinese.

I am Chinese and I have been told over and over that four is a very unlucky number in Chinese culture. This is because the number four in Chinese is written as si, while the word for death is also written as si. Although they are pronounced at a slightly different pitch, they still sound similar enough for the number four to be a taboo number. As a result, I found the Gussenhoven article very interesting because not only did it cover the physical workings of our voices in a way that I was able to see in the mirror, but also it touched upon the intricacy of tone languages that have played a big part in my life.

I also found Kenstowicz’s piece very interesting. He pointed out the fact that native speakers are often unaware of many distinctions or differences between words in their language. People unconsciously hear things that are not there, do not hear things that are actually there, and judge different sounds identically. For example, the words “tents” and “tends” are obviously phonetically different, but to native English speakers they are pronounced the same. Kenstowicz then asks how the rule to drop the [t] and [d] sounds was developed when it was never taught to us, and the answer is that people look for “ideal sounds” in their phonemic inventory that are stored in the mind while learning how to speak a native tongue.

I’ve never noticed the “rules” that are internalized within us when it comes to speech mainly because everybody is conditioned to be unaware of them. They have become an integral part of our languages, but Kentowicz has raised some questions about them. Are people born with this knowledge internalized within them? Does this change how language was acquired in the first place? Go figure.