The Evolution of Speech The purpose of this essay is to identify the evolutionary evidence of speech. The articles reviewed in this paper affirm the evidence of evolution of speech. Much is unknown about the evolution of speech, however, fossil evidence points to adaptations for speech appearing between 1.5 million and 500,000 years ago. Fossil evidence for the evolution of speech is shown in the earliest hominins to one of our well known ancestors, the homo erectus. There are differences between bone structure and hard tissues of living modern humans to those of chimpanzees and bonobos (Boer, 2005). Speech is a unique trait that only humans so far have developed. This trait was most likely a prerequisite for the development of culture within human society. Throughout society, it has been shown that speech can vary from being extremely complex to astonishingly simple. Finally, the way infants acquire speech has become more well known helping provide the starting point of evolution of speech. The physical aspect of language and over time has become an interesting topic of discussion because it is difficult to track its evolution. Adaptations of speech such as the vocal tract and breathing control have left traces in fossil records that continue to be studied to this day. The capacities of speech acoustics and perception are a crucial step in the recognition of vocal tract resonances, or formants in human speech. Tract resonaances function as a bandpass filter, taking whatever sound is emanated in the larynx and shaping it into peaks and valleys (Fitch, 2000). Although all mammals have similar production of sound, only humans make heavy usage of the formants. The study of this has been investigated even to the youngest of inf... ... middle of paper ... ... Puzzle for the Evolution of Speech?" Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21.4 (1998): 512-13. Print. Boer, Bart De. "Modeling Evolution of Speech." Physics of Life Reviews 8.4 (2011): 361-62. Print. De Boer, Bart. "Evolution of Speech and Its Acquisition." Adaptive Behavior 13.4 (2005): 281-92. Print. Enard, Wolfgang. "Molecular Evolution of FOXP2, a Gene Involved in Speech and Language." Nature 418.6900 (2002): 869-72. Print. Ghazanfar, Asif A., and Donald B. Katz. "Distributed Neural Substrates and the Evolution of Speech Production." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21.4 (1998): 516-17. Print. Macneilage, Peter F. "The Frame/content Theory of Evolution of Speech Production." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21.04 (1998): n. pag. Print. Tecumseh, Fitch W. "The Evolution of Speech: A Comparative Review." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4.7 (2000): 258-67. Print.
Seikel, J. A., King, D. W., & Drumright, D. G. (2010). 12. Anatomy & physiology for speech,
My younger brother used to ask questions all the time about how certain words were invented. “Who came up with the word sky? Why did they call it that?” were some of many questions I was asked when we were growing up. I always had to tell him that I had no idea or that it just happened. What Jonathan was questioning is a concept that linguists and anthropologists are still trying to answer today. The evolution of language is an incredibly difficult process to determine. Robbins Burling has written an entire book about, The Talking Ape, and still cannot definitively prove that the theories he presents are the exact way that language developed. However, Burling points out a plethora of evidence that points in such a direction. One piece of
emergence of hierarchical mental construction skills. In, “Language” and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes: Comparative Developmental Perspectives, ed. S. T. Parker & K. R. Gibson, pp. 97–128. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Comparative genomics in chimpanzees is unravelling how this genetic capacity for human language evolved. Human syntactic facilities, particularly our construction of infinite semantics from finite grammar, suggests a uniquely human mechanism deriving from our genotype (Di Sciullo et. al 2010). FOXP2 revealed just two amino acid differences between humans and chimpanzees along with neurological differences in gene expression of motor-speech circuitry (Spiteri et. al 2007). This posits evidence for positive selection on FOXP2 mutations as the reason for the gene’s accelerated evolution in recent evolutionary history, and for its role in computing uniquely human grammars (S...
As the child learns to break down long streams of sounds and recognizes that individual groupings and words are present, the child will begin to replicate the sounds. This action is described by Piaget as part of the preoperational stage; the imitation of sounds by the infant has moved beyond simple mimicking and the child is now attempting to influence his/her environment. At approximately 18 months of age, there is a dramatic increase in the use of language by infants, and it is at this age that the child is more self- aware (Courage, & Howe, 2002). Researchers are still attempting to detect the link between these actions. Understanding the biological reasons which prompt language development and self-recognition will permit the medical professionals to better diagnose...
Kuhl, P. (2007). Is speech learning 'gated' by the social brain?. Developmental Science, 10(1), 110-120.
Language acquisition during early childhood could be determined by a biological explanation. This may show how the brain is wired so children can acquire language ev...
There exist many theories and studies on the formation and evolution of language. FOXP, Forkhead box protein, is generally responsible for the development of speech and language for humans and other mammals and species as well. The purpose for this paper is to address the function, discovery, and evolution of the FOXP2 gene.
Hurford, James R.. "The evolution of the critical period for language acquisition." Cognition 40, no. 3 (1991): 159-201.
Nooteboom, Sieb G. 1969. The tongue slips into patterns. Leyden (studies in linguistics and phonetics. The Hague: Mouton, 114- 32
... (p. 116). In her article, “Babies Prove Sound Learners,” Sohn (2008), states, “Such studies show that, up to about 6 months of age, babies can recognize all the sounds that make up all the languages in the world” (para.24). B.K. Skinner suggest that the materialization of language is the result of imitation and reinforcement. According to Craig and Dunn (2010), “Language development is linked to cognitive development that, in turn, depends on the development of the brain, on physical and perceptual abilities, and on experiences. Biological and social factors also jointly influence the early development of emotion and personality” (p. 117). In her article, A natural history of early language experience. Hart (2000), states, “Talking is important for children, because complexity of what children say influences the complexity of other people’s response” (para. 1).
Language acquisition is perhaps one of the most debated issues of human development. Various theories and approaches have emerged over the years to study and analyse this developmental process. One factor contributing to the differing theories is the debate between nature v’s nurture. A question commonly asked is: Do humans a...
In this part, the writer will point out the importance of the biological and neural foundation of language learning by discussing the following :First, the brain anatomy. Second, l...
There are three main theories of child language acquisition; Cognitive Theory, Imitation and Positive Reinforcement, and Innateness of Certain Linguistic Features (Linguistics 201). All three theories offer a substantial amount of proof and experiments, but none of them have been proven entirely correct. The search for how children acquire their native language in such a short period of time has been studied for many centuries. In a changing world, it is difficult to pinpoint any definite specifics of language because of the diversity and modification throughout thousands of millions of years.
Still today, it is the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Linguists too had the same conviction until 1957, when a then relatively unknown man, A. Noam Chomsky, propounded his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact innate. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, in 1964, his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. As a consequence, he was responsible for the emergence of a new field during the 1960s, Developmental Psycholinguistics, which deals with children’s first language acquisition. He was not the first to question our hitherto mute acceptance of a debatable concept – long before, Plato wondered how children could possibly acquire so complex a skill as language with so little experience of life. Experiments have clearly identified an ability to discern syntactical nuances in very young infants, although they are still at the pre-linguistic stage. Children of three, however, are able to manipulate very complicated syntactical sentences, although they are unable to tie their own shoelaces, for example. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible. Noam Chomsky turned the world’s eyes to this enigmatic question at a time when it was assumed to have a deceptively simple explanation.