Pitch Perfect (or not)

Reading the Gussenhoven and Kenstowicz articles largely split my train of thought into two paths of either music or Spanish, both reliant on real-life linguistic observations.

Because I was classically trained in voice for over four years, my immediate reaction during the Gussenhoven reading was rooted in immediate understanding of glottal stops, diphthongs, and the importance of air flow in producing certain sounds; I was intensely reminded of how wind instruments work based on air pressure. As a singer, we are repeatedly instructed to NOT slip into linguistic habits, but rather to overemphasize consonants with labialization, rounding our lips or pushing them forward (e.g. shaping my lips into an oval to produce the hard "c" of the lyric "Caro") or pressing my tongue to roof of my mouth (palatalization) while vocalizing the "n" in "mio ben." Gussenhoven also explained whispering and breathy voice, phenomena that singers often aim to artistically emulate while technically avoiding, in order to still produce sound. Breathy voice, maintained by preventing the completion of vocal fold vibration, is often used to stylize a piece or maintain a softer volume while retaining force; I now understand why I felt like I was holding something in check (i.e. I was consciously halting vocal cord vibration) while using breathy voice. Gussenhoven put names to techniques I'd been using in choirs for years, but what really piqued my curiosity was pitch differences between everyday speech and singing, since Gussenhoven failed to focus extensively on pitch variance (other than its use in distinguishing words in tone languages). How much of our voice's pitch can we – or do we – control? As Meghan stated in class, voice pitch is indicative of gender and an unconscious – yet deliberate – act. Singing is an intentional manipulation of that pitch, and yet I'm still curious about how to denote differences between one's natural and doctored pitches.

In addition to the previous questions regarding pitches, I also wondered about varying pitch performances in different languages. I lived in rural Peru this summer and spoke largely Spanish, and my "Spanish-speaking voice" was absolutely a higher baseline pitch than my "English-speaking voice." Gussenhoven's article makes me wonder if there's biological basis to the myth that if one learns a language too late in life, one loses the ability to acquire a native-sounding accent; is there a point at which one's vocal tract and larynx physically cannot approach sound in a certain way? (None of the structures that we use for speech are even originally for that purpose! Vocal cords protect the lungs from food and saliva!)

Beyond pitches, though, the phonological theory that Kenstowicz outlined in the reading matched with everyday observations I made while speaking two languages. While examining the [t] allophone example, I was reminded of how pronunciations of "t" in Spanish are almost indistinguishable from that of "d," somehow softened (the t's/d's in "nada" and "tener" sound more alike than not), like the flap ([D]) realization of "t" ("outing," "hitter") demonstrated in the Kenstowicz reading. I understand why a popular English mistake of native Spanish speakers is to equate "v" and "b"; as Gussehoven made clear, it's not lack of physiological ability to form the distinct sounds, but rather that the two are blurred in Spanish but distinct in English – the sounds are phonetically different, but Spanish speakers recognize them as the same.