Re: Evolution of Human Speech??

On Sep 20, 6:55 pm, Marc Verhaegen <m_verhae...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Evolution of Human Speech
Philip Lieberman 2007
Current Anthropology 48: 39­66

Human speech involves species-specific anatomy deriving from the
descent of the tongue into the pharynx. The human tongue's shape and
position yields the 1:1 oral-to-pharyngeal proportions of the
supralaryngeal vocal tract. Speech also requires a brain that can
"reiterate" freely reorder a finite set of motor gestures to form a
potentially infinite number of words and sentences. The end points of
the evolutionary process are clear. The chimpanzee lacks a
supralaryngeal vocal tract capable of producing the "quantal" sounds
which facilitate both speech production and perception and a brain
that can reiterate the phonetic contrasts apparent in its fixed
vocalizations. The traditional Broca-Wernicke brain-language theory is
incorrect; neural circuits linking regions of the cortex with the
basal ganglia and other subcortical structures regulate motor control,
including speech production, as well as cognitive processes including
syntax. The dating of the FOXP2 gene, which governs the embryonic
development of these subcortical structures, provides an insight on
the evolution of speech and language. The starting points for human
speech and language were perhaps walking and running. However, fully
human speech anatomy first appears in the fossil record in the Upper
Paleolithic (about 50,000 years ago) and is absent in both
Neanderthals and earlier humans.

DD:
What next??
Running: Origin of sex?
Running: Origin of Life?
Running: Origin of (fill in the blanks)

:-D

--Marc

Note the key phrase: "fully human". I'm in the camp that says that
genus Homo has always had some variety of speech. It just wasn't like
what we use today, because the anatomy was different.

John Roth

.

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