phonetics, phonology, and production

The Gussenhoven and Kenstowicz chapters provide a comprehensive and well rounded introduction to phonetics and phonology. Gussenhoven presents a survey of the organs involved in speech production, tying their structure to their function and giving examples of their roles and differences in multiple languages. The main vocal ‘pipeline’ stems from the lungs and the larynx, which produce vibrations via air pressure which are then further shaped by downstream organs in the vocal tract.

Kenstowicz focuses less on the anatomical basis of sound production and introduces the relationship between phonetics and phonology. He uses the example of the [t] phenome to show the necessity of phonology as a distinct study from phonetics. He also shows the difficulty in assigning rules regarding its sound in different contexts -- i.e. its different allophones -- and explains that native speakers are largely unaware of these rules.

The Gussenhoven chapter was interesting to me because I’ve encountered much of this material before in the context of singing and signal processing. Gussenhoven walks the reader through a number of different organs of speech --  the lungs, glottis, vocal tract -- and explains what role they play in shaping the sounds of speech. This material is typically introduced in a first course on music production as it’s essential for both the recording and mixing processes. For example, knowing the formants for different vowels sounds is crucial to filtering a vocal recording to sound ‘bright’ or ‘smooth’. The Kenstowicz chapter also resonated with me from a singer’s point of view -- often in vocal recordings, it is necessary to think more explicitly about the manner in which one pronounces words in order to clearly articulate sounds that are, in normal speaking contexts, inferred by the listener.