Thoughts on the Readings

Gussenhoven provides us with a comprehensive tour of how our "speech organs" interact with one another to create all of the different sounds that humans use to communicate.  In some ways, reading Gussenhoven's piece made me think back to Descartes.  In the same way that Descartes was able to produce his explanation of the reflex arc, Gussenhoven's article distilled the production of human speech down to a series of very specific and mechanical processes.  His article essentially outlines the biological algorithms, rooted in our speech organs, to produce any general category of sounds that we could think of.  Gussenhoven demonstrates how clicks, for example, are the product of a "velar closure plus a closure somewhere further forward.  This forward closure may be located at the lips (rare) or at, or immediately behind, the alveolar ridge" (17).  In this vain, Gussenhoven demonstrates how the production of human sound is a very mechanical process with different sounds being consistently generated by the same hardware components that exist in our body.

In my own experience, I remember trying to say the word desert in German, wüste, to two German 

children.  We spent twenty minutes together giggling at my inability to pronounce the word correctly 

because it required a slight trill with the back of my tongue that I had never even known was 

physiologically possible.  By the end of the day, I had not only uncovered a new tongue movement 

but I also was able to pronounce the word!  Having read the Gussenhoven article, it’s certainly nice to 

know that sounds from foreign languages that I think are too difficult for me to produce are actually 

within my physiological capabilities.

The Gussenhoven article provides a wonderful primer for the Kenstowicz article.  The two can be linked in my opinion by this question: How can the same underlying sounds produced mechanically by the body, morph into many different sounds that maintain the same meaning as the original?  Whereas the former focuses on how sounds are produced, the latter addresses the different contextual rules which humans use to interpret sounds. The article specifies that often times humans don’t really know what these rules are explicitly but they are very good at knowing when these rules are not followed.  It also illustrates how these unspoken rules give rise to many different variants (allophones) of the same underlying sound (phoneme).  It is very interesting to me that communities then use these variants to produce their own dialect, which then enables them to identify the breakers of rules who are not natives of their community.  This in turn leads me to think of an evolutionary purpose for refashioning these sounds.  Perhaps by modifying these sounds, it allows groups to communicate more effectively with each other in the presence of outsiders, providing an additional layer of security.  Another possible reason is that these refashioned sounds adds a layer of communal acceptance and culture to the group that reinforces each individual’s sense of belonging.