Phonetics, Phonology and Education

The two articles this week introduce phonetics and phonology to us by providing substantial cross linguistics examples.

Gussenhoven answers the question “how human beings produce speech” from the perspective of biology and anatomy. He systematically outlines the workings of the speech production mechanism and categorizes the sounds on the basis of their articulation. This article discusses the speech production process in two stages. The first one is the function of the lungs and the larynx. The lungs create air pressure to help produce speech sounds and the larynx is a valve to control the airstream from the lungs. The second one is the function of vocal tract, which consists of the pharynx, the mouth and the nasal cavity. This channel modifies the sound generated at the glottis.  

Kenstowicz mainly uses eight distinct pronunciations of the coronal stop [t] in American English to introduce the relationship between phonetics and phonology. Native speakers tend to judge these phonetically different sounds to be identical. But actually they appear under a certain circumstance. The author summarizes a series of phonological rules to explain when each variant pronunciation is produced. But he also points out that there is a question whether we should define these rules as one or two levels of representation. Although structural linguistics and generative linguistics have proposed various solution to answer this question, this mystery is still unsolved. 

I have taught Chinese as a second language for several years. As a language teacher, I find these two articles very interesting, especially Kenstowicz’s article. When I read the Kenstovicz article, I kept thinking that If native speakers need to be trained to realize the difference of some sounds which they judge to be identical, how can second language learners learn these differences? But it is exactly the value of studying these phonological rules. For native speakers, they have internalized these rules without any consciousness. But second language learners do not have such experience. Without the knowledge of these phonological rules, second language learners will find it extremely difficult to learn a language well and speak like a native speaker.

Kenstowic’s article also reminds me of a famous movie called “Pygmalion”(1938). This movie tells a story that a language professor trained a woman with heavy accent and helped her speak as a lady. Knowing how to speak with a certain rule sometimes has something to do with the education and the social status. I think it might be interesting to study the phonology and phonetics from this perspective.