Dec 14, 2019 07:21 AM
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n...180973759/
EXCERPT: . . . Some scientists have theorized that it only became physically possible to speak a wide range of essential vowel sounds when our vocal anatomy changed with the rise of Homo sapiens some 300,000 years ago. This theoretical timeline means that language, where the brain associates words with objects or concepts and arranges them in complex sentences, would have been a relatively recent phenomenon, developing with or after our ability to speak a diverse array of sounds.
But a comprehensive study analyzing several decades of research, from primate vocalization to vocal tract acoustic modeling, suggests the idea that only Homo sapiens could physically talk may miss the mark when it comes to our ancestors’ first speech—by a staggering 27 million years or more.
Linguist Thomas Sawallis of the University of Alabama and colleagues stress that functional human speech is rooted in the ability to form contrasting vowel sounds. These critical sounds are all that differentiates entirely unrelated words like "bat," "bought," "but" and "bet." Building a language without the variety of these contrasting vowel sounds would be nearly impossible. The research team’s new study in Science Advances concludes that early human ancestors, long before even the evolution of the genus Homo, actually did have the anatomical ability to make such sounds.
When, over all those millions of years, human ancestors developed the cognitive ability to use speech to converse with each other remains an open question. “What we’re saying is not that anyone had language any earlier,” Sawallis says. ”We’re saying that the ability to make contrasting vowel qualities dates back at least to our last common ancestor with Old World monkeys like macaques and baboons. That means the speech system had at least 100 times longer to evolve than we thought.”
[...] The team reviewed several studies of primate vocalization and communication, and they used data from earlier research to model speech sounds. Several lines of research suggested the same conclusion—humans aren’t alone in their ability to make these sounds, so the idea that our unique anatomy enabled them doesn’t appear to hold water... (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: . . . Some scientists have theorized that it only became physically possible to speak a wide range of essential vowel sounds when our vocal anatomy changed with the rise of Homo sapiens some 300,000 years ago. This theoretical timeline means that language, where the brain associates words with objects or concepts and arranges them in complex sentences, would have been a relatively recent phenomenon, developing with or after our ability to speak a diverse array of sounds.
But a comprehensive study analyzing several decades of research, from primate vocalization to vocal tract acoustic modeling, suggests the idea that only Homo sapiens could physically talk may miss the mark when it comes to our ancestors’ first speech—by a staggering 27 million years or more.
Linguist Thomas Sawallis of the University of Alabama and colleagues stress that functional human speech is rooted in the ability to form contrasting vowel sounds. These critical sounds are all that differentiates entirely unrelated words like "bat," "bought," "but" and "bet." Building a language without the variety of these contrasting vowel sounds would be nearly impossible. The research team’s new study in Science Advances concludes that early human ancestors, long before even the evolution of the genus Homo, actually did have the anatomical ability to make such sounds.
When, over all those millions of years, human ancestors developed the cognitive ability to use speech to converse with each other remains an open question. “What we’re saying is not that anyone had language any earlier,” Sawallis says. ”We’re saying that the ability to make contrasting vowel qualities dates back at least to our last common ancestor with Old World monkeys like macaques and baboons. That means the speech system had at least 100 times longer to evolve than we thought.”
[...] The team reviewed several studies of primate vocalization and communication, and they used data from earlier research to model speech sounds. Several lines of research suggested the same conclusion—humans aren’t alone in their ability to make these sounds, so the idea that our unique anatomy enabled them doesn’t appear to hold water... (MORE - details)