[lojban-beginners] Re: Differently-shaped vocal equipment (was: Re: Re: lojban-beginners Digest V6 #97)

["Turniansky, Michael [UNK]" <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>]

  The problem is not just one of "habit and training".  The problem is that the brain actually loses the ability to distinguish between phonemes that are not consequential in their language.  So, while someone can be trained mechanically how to produce a particular phoneme (the same way deaf are in oral schools), if they cannot hear the difference, they don't get the proper self-feedback to see if they are producing it correctly.  This occurs because synaptic connections are pruned in infancy during the language acquiring process (presumably because less connections means faster processing time, necessary for a realtime language processing).  So for example, tests with PET scans of native Japanese speakers vs. German and English speakers have shown that hearing of the sounds [l] and [r] are processed in two different parts of German and English speakers' brains, but only in a single place in a Japanese speaker's brains.  So it becomes much harder for them to tell the difference.  See for example, this article:
http://www.indiana.edu/~hlw/PhonProcess/learning.html
Thus, it behooves lojban to be "forgiving" in their phonemic space, although there are still (as xorxes points out), places where distinctions are made in lojban that might be difficult for certain speakers of other languages to produce or hear.

            --gejyspa


-----Original Message-----
From: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org [mailto:lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org] On Behalf Of m.kornig@sondal.net
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2007 11:41 AM
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Differently-shaped vocal equipment (was: Re: Re: lojban-beginners Digest V6 #97)

Selon Arnt Richard Johansen <arj@nvg.org>:

> You are right that the pronunciation ranges are there to help p�eople with
> different linguistic backgrounds, but race does not enter into the picture.
> Racial differences in vocal tract shape and size are dwarfed in comparison to
> individual differences. (
> http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/view.cgi?acc_num=ohiou1050668842 )
>
> Except for abnormal conditions such as a cleft palate, everyone is equally
> capable, physically, of producing any speech sound.

Yes, I agree. It's mostly a question of habit and training.

I work as a language teacher in France, where I teach
both English and German. You may know that the letter
H is not pronounced in French. You pronounce it however
in most cases at the beginning of a word both in English
and in German.

After a bit of training most of my students are able
to pronounce words like "heat", "high" and "hand"
correctly (and thus make clear that they don't mean
"eat", "I" or "and"). I have noticed however that,
even after hours of thorough training, most of my
students still have difficulties in HEARING the
difference between "heat" and "eat", "hi" and "eye",
or "hand" and "and". It seems that they are not used
to hearing the H at the beginning of a word (or a
sentence) and just "don't pay attention" to it.

So it seems to me that listening habits are more
difficult to change than pronounciation habits. And I
do believe that both French and English have the same
ears...

Martin