The brain is mightier than the vocal tract

Both Gussehoven and Kenstowicz extensively detail the anatomy and articulations needed to produce various allophones, but what really struck me is how speech is still generally understandable. Even though human surely must have anatomical differences beyond the rough correlation between vocal tract length and pitch, most speech still sounds the same despite the precise positioning of the organs of speech required. However evolved the human vocal tract is, with all the variations and specificity in pronunciation that arise from the many different parts that Gussehoven details, the human brain has evolved even more to parse otherwise nonsensical utterances from a top down perspective and arrive at the intended meaning.


As Kenstowicz states, the way that individuals perceive greatly differs from the actual sounds that they produce, as in “collective phonetic illusions.” However, even though we somehow all learn these subtle differences in pronunciation compared to spelling, we are still able to comprehend speech regardless of differences in their pronunciation. Non-adherence to phonetic rules may demand more attention from the listener to decipher, but there are a variety of factors that may impact an individual’s pronunciation. Speech impediments, accents, a cold, and many other factors affect the ability for individuals to completely adhere to the articulations that Gussehoven and Kenstowicz describe, yet comprehension remains largely intact. Thus, I propose that even more than phonetics and how sounds are produced, the most fascinating part of human speech lies in the flexibility in mental representations of words that allows for the mental ability to decode speech.