Le Baron wrote:Cainntear wrote:Le Baron wrote:I don't know how much looking at phonetics and 'theoretical' oral production actually works.
Theoretical oral production... what even
is that?
The usual theorising about oral production using things like IPA etc. which has next to limited value for people working on their own and doesn't even cover the nuances of oral production.
OK, I see what you're trying to say. The core of the misunderstanding is that I don't see IPA as "theory" but merely "notation" -- theorising has to be talking about the whats and whys -- it seems to me you're not talking about theorisation at all, but actually about people who mistakently
believe they're talking about "theoretical" stuff, when they're really talking about
technicalities while totally
ignoring theory.
Cainntear wrote:Le Baron wrote:In the final analysis it's about how much you can attune your ear to sounds you hear and reproduce them - essentially imitate them.
How can you attune your ear to a sound you can't reproduce?
That's why the bit I've put in bold: 'how much', is relevant. Someone might not be very capable of doing it at all. Some people are very capable of
imitating sounds heard.
And an ability to imitate sounds doesn't necessarily mean getting good at doing things right. As I've said before, I had a Spanish teacher who wouldn't correct anyone who pronounced /d/ as either an English alveolar D or an English dental TH, but would "correct" me when I pronounce /d/ as apico-dental [d] where it should have been the apico-dental [ð] allophone. I was saying the correct phoneme, and they weren't; I was "corrected", and they weren't. They were picking up on what the pronunciation sounded like, I was picking up on the theoretical stuff based on my own study of linguistics. I doubt any of them were ever mistaken for native speakers.
Cainntear wrote:Personally, I feel that if I know (approximately) how to carry out the physical motions to reproduce a sound, then I'm more likely to recognise that a sound I hear relates to a particular sound I'm trying to produce for myself. I'm also more likely to detect the subtle differences that set me apart from the native speaker.
Okay, that's you then. Its completely in line with what I described. Someone who is not Cainntear might not do any of that or even be able to.
So someone who is not me might not be able to follow instructions to touch their gumline while saying "D" in Spanish? I find that very hard to believe.
Cainntear wrote:So I suppose it all hangs on what you mean by "theoretical oral production". If you mean failing to engage in practical oral production; sure -- that's a problem. But who even does that?
Lots of people do it.
OK, and again, as I say, I was mislead by your talk about "theoretical". The way I see it, you seem to be believing people who claim to be talking about theoretical linguistics when they do no such thing. As such, I see no reason to suggest theoretical linguistics is valueless, and holding up examples that are not dealing with theory doesn't prove that point.
Cainntear wrote:Le Baron wrote:This is part of the reason why in another thread I dismissed the notion of total self-correction. There are things you will be able to hear and things you won't be able to hear (yet) no matter how much they are described.
No,
but if you're able to say it right even though you can't hear the difference, your brain at least knows that two sounds that might seem the same to your ear are different, and it builds the "boxes" to put the sounds in. If there's a meaningful difference in production, you
will learn to hear the difference; if there's
no meaningful difference in production, you might
never see the need to start learning the distinction.
I don't know what the underlined part means.
What it means is basically what the introduction to Colloquial Hindi told me. Where many languages have a T and a D, Hindi has 4 of each, representing 3 variables of difference. You have t, th, d, dh, T, TH, D, DH; the first four are (IIRC) apico-dental, and the remaining four are retroflex. Anything notated with an H is apirated; anything without is unaspirated. The t/d part is voicing as a phonemic distinction. A European language speaker will likely never hear that there are 8 phonemes where their own language has only two, and the teacher who wrote the book stated that you can't learn what you don't ever notice. Her line was that even if you never hear the difference, it's important that you make the distinction in your speech, because you will not be understood if you don't.
If there's something that I am capable of doing that others aren't, it's that I can learn to link received sound with my own produced sound. If other people can't do this, then they still have the fallback to the book author's line that being able to pronounce something you can't hear means you'll at least never by misunderstood.
We say things correctly when we can identify the sound, hear the difference and have the ability to reproduce them (which might only be a matter of practise).
So you are saying that someone who can correctly produce sounds in English perfectly cannot "say things correctly" if they can't hear the difference? That seems like a bit of a stretch.
It's perfectly possible to hear things, but not have the ability to reproduce them.
"Hear things", yes. But the lack of ability to reproduce them is because you do not
perceive them correctly, or rather that you do not perceive
what exactly they are doing.
The fact that most English people can understand but not imitate a Scottish accent is because they don't know the fundamental differences between the sound systems north and south of the border. How do you learn the fundamental differences without looking into theory?
That's how a massive audience can instantly recognise the voices Rory Bremner does, but can't do them.
Funny you should name a Scotsman who studied modern language at an English university to me of all people. I do strongly suspect that Bremner's career as an impressionist was a result of him consciously studying the "theoretical" side of phonology....
I can recognise musical notes sung and played, I can name them, but I can't always reproduce them vocally. I'm not a trained a singer, I don't practise to be one.
I thought you were arguing that learning to consciously produce was a waste of time, and implying that production might come as a result of input...? You're losing me here.
Some people do better than me, some people do worse. Some people can't even hear the notes, they are unlikely to reproduce them, because in fact what are they reproducing? They can't hear anything.
There is no way to accurately describe the physical act of producing a C# with your voice. However, I can describe how to produce T or D. Also, I can accurately describe the physical act of producing a C#
on a piano.
There are very few people on the planet who are literally tone deaf. For most people, the act of playing an instrument develops their musical ear far more than listening non-stop to MP3s or popular, folk or classical music, or any mixture of them. But even a genuinely tone-deaf individual would be able to reproduce a song on a piano with direct instruction.
People may well learn to hear the difference, but this is no guarantee of reproduction. A common reproduction 'error' in Dutch I hear a lot is pronouncing the 'ui' in e.g. the word 'huis' as the German 'eu' such as in 'Freud'. I've tested it by asking such people if they think these sounds are different and they correctly say 'yes', but still can't reproduce the difference. Someone I know has been doing it for 21 years.
Do they know
what the difference is? That's where I think theoretical articulatory phonology comes into things: tell someone what the difference is and they'll be able to do it.
