Our Innate Aptitude for Linguistic Complexity

In the Gussenhoven selection, entitled "The production of speech," we are given a brief introduction to the range of discrete sounds considered humanly possible  and the physiological processes by which each sound is produced. The chapter read like a descriptive definition of terms, where multiple elements of speech are demonstrated and their origins explained irrespective of any one human language. What is interesting from an uninformed perspective, is the measure of variability each vocal organ (a term which the text makes a point to distinguish as purely descriptive rather than functional, as these organs have alternate primary functions) brings to each phoneme and to what can be described as the sound bank of human language. How any variation to a combination of such vocal organs used to produce a sound forms a phonetically distinct set highlights the complexity of phonology and consequently how bizarre it really is that we are able to internalize these sounds so naturally.

This strange aptitude we have for the internalization not only of sounds but also of the wide array of possible morphological variants which exist in some languages are further displayed in the Kenstowicz selection, entitled "The Phoneme." He presents us with a single phoneme /t/ and deconstructs it into all of its allophones, examining the existing posited rules which attempt to ascribe consistently to any instance of a phoneme a particular allophone given a word's phonetic structure. But what he makes clear is that these rules are obeyed subconsciously and attributed such that most speakers are unaware of. As native English speakers, we are fully capable of pronouncing the distinct allophones of /t/, but are superficially incapable of recognizing the sound in common speech as distinct in cases where a non-native speaker of English would be able to immediately differentiate them. These allophone groups are interesting, and beg the question, Why do certain groups exist in certain languages, to which he suggests a number of possible responses. Perhaps the most compelling is derived from the "information structures of the individual speaker," the "right" model we internalize while learning to speak the language.

I am reminded of Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, where he proposes that our capacity to learn a language is something of a biologically inherited trait, and that the variations of grammars that appear in the worlds languages are for us inherently learn-able. How are these systems modeled in our brains, and how do we have the ability to model them in the first place? Just like a definitively anatomical process which we perform without thinking anything of it, and indeed which at times we cannot control at all, we are often completely unaware of the complexity in speech, as well as the distinct structure of our native languages. A question that I walk away from these two selections with is, How does breaking this wall of ignorance (in reference to grammar and phonetics) affect our ability to learn a language after adolescence when language acquisition is no longer naturally occurring?