Topic-169: Problems with Linguistic Explanations While discussing the phonetics of the individual, we need to consider that the linguistic phonetic explanation does not always satisfy all the topics of speech production and we at times need to consider the phonetics of the individual. There are current phonetic research trends and theories which focus on a large extent on topics such as speech motor control, the representation of speech in memory, and the interaction of speech perception and production and their roles in language change. More importantly, we find explanations for language sound patterns in these and other related topics. Take the example of the phenomenon of assimilation where the adjacent sounds come to share some phonetic properties. But if we restrict ourselves to the terminology and knowledge base of linguistic phonetics (the phonetics of the community we are restricted to descriptions of sound patterns and not their explanation. In fact, explanations that are restricted in this way often fall into the fallacy of reification (i.e., acting as if abstract things are concrete.
