Phonological Foundations

In this week's reading, Kenstowicz and Gussenhoven lay the foundation for phonology. Their approaches to the subject are quite different, with Gussenhoven focusing primarily on the biophysical means by which humans produce speech, and Kenstowicz placing the spotlight on how native speakers can interpret sounds to be identical that are phonetically distinct. Instead of comparing and contrasting the two articles, it seems more prudent to view them as interrelated: Gussenhoven provides a solid background for the anatomical mechanisms that Kenstowicz’s phoneme discussions depend on.

Taken as whole, Gussenhoven’s paper is general in its approach, but surprisingly thorough in its analysis of human speech production. I found, for example, his descriptions of whisper, breathy voice, and creaky voice to be quite revealing. I never actually thought about the concept of tightening the vocal folds to produce friction as the commonality between these three special types of phonation, but it makes a great deal of sense after giving it some thought (and trying it out).

Kenstowicz’s paper is equally thorough, with his analysis of American English phoneme perception pointing to an interesting disjunction between an intended phoneme and the biophysical process needed to produce it in different cases. I found the concept of “collective phonetic illusions” that stems from this phenomenon to be fascinating – it wasn’t until I tried out the rules for realizing the [t] phoneme that I realized just how differently we produce the [t] in words, sometimes (like in the case of “pants”) by not voicing the [t] at all.

What interests me most, however, is the intersection of Gussenhoven and Kenstowicz. Taken together, the articles form an interesting basis for our understanding of phonology. Kenstowicz explains how there are extremely precise differences in the production of words that sound almost identical but are actually spelled entirely differently, such as “writer” and “rider” or “tent” and “tend.” His descriptions are dense, but make much more sense when you keep the Gussenhoven reading in mind. Similarly, Kenstowicz talks a good deal about the significance of different voicing patterns, such as “aspirations” and “glottal stops.” These terms don’t make much sense without the full anatomical description of what they mean. Gussenhoven provides this background, however, so the jargon becomes much more coherent. Thus, I find that the articles complement each other well, with Gussenhoven naturally entailing Kenstowicz, and Kenstowicz naturally entailing further discussion on how we acquire languages overall.