Week 2 reading reflections in Finegan

Reading Finegan chapters 3 &4 proved somewhat difficult due to the nature of the content. Linguistics in general is a new area for me, but I really lack background knowledge in phonetics and phonetics and phonology other than basic knowledge in teaching beginning reading (which I studied many years ago and have never done in my teaching) and dabbling in choral music and singing.

Chapter 3 focused on sounds and describing them through the phonetic alphabet system known as the IPA. This I know from directing choirs. Oftentimes, song texts are described via the IPA. It's a helpful tool in the world of choir directing. Likewise, many of the terms related to airflow and mouth placements are important to the singer and to the choir director explaining to singers how to produce sounds. Reading the chapter reminds me how complex one seemingly little part of the body (the mouth) is. Trying to describe the sound production process takes a great deal of specific language and knowledge. I don't think I would want to become a speech pathologist.

Chapter 4 focused on phonology, the study of sound systems in languages. Keeping terms like phonemes and allophones straight in my head is proving difficult at this point. I'm hoping class tomorrow will help straighten that out. Again, it's interesting getting a taste of how linguists create language to explain what just happens naturally in people, even more amazingly to very young children. Even though this process is complex, young children uncover the phonological rules and underlying forms for word units in order to produce surface forms of the language simply by experiencing language in their environments. Amazing!