CCHU9042

Human Language:
Nature or Nurture?

Week 5
How do humans have language? (1)
O. Lam
osclam@hku.hk
Feb. 21, 2024
1
Today’s plan
 What makes it possible for us to have speech?
 How do we produce speech sounds?
 What is special about the human vocal tract, and how is this
significant?
 Is our vocal tract uniquely human?

 Reading:
Coghlan, Andy. 2017. It only takes a few gene tweaks to make a
human voice. New Scientist.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2145475-it-only-takes-a-few-
gene-tweaks-to-make-a-human-voice/.
2
Speech
 All natural languages have a spoken form
 speech as the primary mode of communication among humans
 speech sounds are sounds used in words to convey meanings
 not all sounds are speech sounds
 speech sounds allow humans to distinguish among meanings
 phonemes – meaning-distinguishing sounds

pie Iie
i
are minimal pairs

3
Generated by Gencraft
Speech sounds
si see su sue
individual phonemes are not meaningful
 [s] [i] [u]
 combining them in language-specific ways will give you
units that have meaning
 duality of patterning
 discrete meaningful units are made up of discrete
meaningless units
 one of Hockett’s design features of language

4
Production of human speech sounds

 3 things are necessary to produce speech sounds

(McMahon and McMahon 2013):
1. an airstream/ airflow
2. vibration to create sound waves
3. modification of the sound waves to create speech sounds

5
Airstream
 To produce a sound,
the airstream from the
lungs passes through
the larynx, goes into
the oral or nasal
cavities, and finally gets
out of the mouth or
nose.

(Source of image:
http://www.ikonet.com/en/visualdi
ctionary/static/us/speech)
6
Airstream

 Airstream/ airflow
 controlled

 Speaking as a form of
‘modified breathing’
(McMahon and McMahon
2013)
 Lieberman & Blumstein (1988:4), in Dawson & Phelan
(2016)

7
The larynx
 the ‘voice box’
 epiglottis
 a flap that prevents food and drink from
getting into the trachea while swallowing
 hyoid bone
 the only ‘floating’ bone in our body

(Source of image:
http://www.ikonet.com/en/visualdictionary/
static/us/speech)

8
 Vocal folds
 vocal folds (or vocal
cords)
 found inside the larynx
 elastic bands of tissues
 vibrate Vocal folds in the closed position during speech

Source of pictures: Sean Parker Institute for the Voice,

Weill Cornell Medicine.2024.
https://voice.weill.cornell.edu/voice-evaluation/normal-
voice-function 9
Vocal folds in the open position for breathing
Vocal folds
The vocal folds vibrate during the production of a sound

Source: Sean Parker Institute for the Voice, Weill Cornell Medicine.2024. https://voice.weill.cornell.edu/voice-
evaluation/normal-voice-function 10
Modification of sounds waves
 sound waves created by the vibration of vocal folds are
modified to create different sounds
 How?
 Activity:
1. Say ‘lalalala…’.
2. Say it again, but in a slow and exaggerated manner.

11
Modification of sounds waves
 Moving your tongue up and down, forward and backward will
create different speech sounds.
 hit, hut, hall
 heed, who’d

 the shape of the vocal tract is changed continually as we

talk (Lieberman 2007)
 Magnetic Resonance (MR) images (Ventura et al. 2011)

(Belyk et al. 2023)

12
The human vocal tract
 Supralaryngeal vocal tract
 a tongue
 two segments
 ‘a horizontal oral cavity (SVTh)
and
 a vertical pharyngeal cavity
(SVTv)
 of almost equal length (1:1
proportions) positioned at a
right angle’ (Lieberman
2007:40)

13
Modification of sounds waves
 A highly flexible, movable tongue and the two-tube
configuration of the vocal tract allow humans to have a large
range of sounds that can be used for speech.
 Vocal-tract Model with Flexible Tongue (Arai 2014)

14
Combining speech sounds
 speech sounds are combined very quickly (MacLarnon
2012)
 vocal tract configurations have to be modified rapidly
 on a single breath movement

 chimpanzee pant-hoots

15
What is special about the human
vocal tract?
 The descended larynx
 humans have a lower
larynx compared to
chimpanzees (in image)
 human babies have a
higher larynx like
chimpanzees

(Source of image: Davidson (2003),

in Lester & LaGasse (2008))

16
What is special about the human
vocal tract?
 Advantage:
 when swallowing, the
epiglottis covers the
trachea
 the breathing pathway
and the swallowing
pathway are completely
different (Lester &
LaGasse 2008)
 Disadvantage:
 tongues are relatively flat
and are almost entirely
inside the oral cavities 17
Development of the human vocal tract
 From about 3 months the larynx
in a human baby descends; the
larynx reaches an adult-like
position at around 6-8 years of
age (Lieberman et al. 2001;
Sasaki et al. 1977)
 the epiglottis is further away
from the soft palate
 the pharynx is elongated
 the bend gradually forms a
right angle
(Benner 2010)  the vocal tract: from about 8
cm at birth to about 17 cm in
adulthood
18
Why?
 Disadvantage of a low larynx in
adult humans:
 increased risks of choking!
 swallowing
https://youtu.be/8-4MZ_-Mpv8

 Then WHY?
 Do we want to choke???
(Benner 2010)

19
The ability to talk
 We need to talk!

 Advantage of a low larynx:

 a flexible tongue divides the vocal tract into two tubes, the
shapes of which can be modified in more ways to create a
larger inventory of sounds (McMahon and McMahon 2013).

 The ability to speak > the protection against choking

 Having a vocal tract with a lowered larynx might have been
more beneficial in terms of survival (Hoff 2012:34-5). 20
Uniquely human?
 Lieberman et al. (1969) – yes
育模型
 a plaster cast of the oral cavity of a rhesus monkey was made
soon after it died
 a computer model of its supralaryngeal vocal tract was created
 using this model, they made predictions of which vowels could
possibly be made by rhesus monkeys
 the range was small

 dominant view – monkeys cannot produce speech sounds because

of the way their vocal tract anatomy
 Lieberman et al. (1969), ‘Vocal Tract Limitations on the Vowel
21
Repertoires of Rhesus Monkey and other Nonhuman Primates’
Vocal tract configurations
 When we hear speech, we perceive sound waves.
 Vowels can be distinguished as they have different formant
frequencies.
 a formant - a resonant frequency of the vocal tract

https://sail.usc.edu/~lgoldste/General_Phonetics/Source_Filter/SFc.html 22
Vocal tract configurations
Rightsequence withtheright
sound

Based on image in https://opentextbc.ca/psyclanguage/chapter/the-articulatory-system/

23
Uniquely human?
 the role of the descended larynx in
humans’ capacity for speech?
 Fitch and Reby (2001)
 during mating season, stags
produce loud low-pitched
vocalizations
 deer lower their larynges
during vocalizations
 the vocal tract is elongated
to produce vocalizations
with lower formant
frequencies
 The size exaggeration
hypothesis (Fitch 2016) -
they will sound bigger in
24
size
 Difference (Fitch 2016):
 descent in deer
 not permanent
 only in vocalizations
 dynamic descent

 descent in humans
 permanent
 descent takes place during development
 permanent decent

 Significance
 the descended larynx is found in non-primate mammals and is not uniquely
human (Fitch and Reby 2001)
 from an evolutionary point of view, the descended larynx must have functions
other than speech, and cannot be used as a ‘diagnostic of speech’ 25
 the size exaggeration hypothesis (Fitch and Reby 2001; Fitch 2016)
 the larynx descends in infancy, and again in puberty, but only in
males
 men have significantly longer vocal tracts than women - lower
formant frequencies
 the larynx itself grows – longer vocal folds – lower-pitched
voices
 illogical to claim that only males, but not females, have to further
modify their vocal tract shapes in order to have more speech
sounds
 the size exaggeration hypothesis seems to be a more plausible
explanation

26
 Uniquely human?
 Fitch et al. (2016)
 Lieberman et al. (1969) ‘drastically
underestimate the flexibility of the
mammalian vocal tract’
 Would the results be different if the
vocal tracts of living monkeys were
studied?
 x-ray videos of macaque
monkeys were made
 99 images of various upper vocal
tract configurations (observed
during vocalization, facial
displays, feeding and
swallowing) were selected
 a computer model of a living 27

monkey vocal tract was built

 Results (Fitch et al. 2016)
 based on the observed vocal tract configurations, monkeys are capable
of producing 5 distinguishable vowels
 5 is the average number in languages
 ‘those in the English words “bit,” “bet,” “bat,” “but,” and “bought”’
 a vocal tract configuration corresponding to [i] was not observed
 the monkey vocal tract is not as restricted as was previously assumed 28
Then, why do only humans have the
capacity for language?
 Monkeys cannot talk
 NOT because they do not have a suitable vocal tract, as
claimed in earlier studies

 there seems to be a strong correlation between the human

vocal tract anatomy and the wide range of speech sounds
that can be produced (McMahon and McMahon 2013)
 but the importance and the uniqueness of the vocal tract anatomy
should not be overestimated

 a speech-ready vocal tract AND a speech-ready brain 29

References
Arai, Takayuki. 2014. Vocal-tract model with flexible tongue. Sophia University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwfdLYuC0n0.
Belyk, Michel, Christopher Carignan & Carolyn McGettigan. 2023. An open-source toolbox for measuring vocal tract shape from real-time
magnetic resonance images. Behaviour Research Methods. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02171-9
Benner, Allison. 2010. Production and Perception of Laryngeal Constriction in the Early Vocalizations of Bai and English Infants. Canadian
Acoustics, 38: 120-121.
Davidson, T.M., 2003. The great leap forward: The anatomic basis for the acquisition of speech and obstructive sleep apnea. Sleep Med, 4:
185–194,
Dawson, Hope C. & Michael Phelan (eds). 2016. Language files: Materials for an introduction to language, 12 ed. Columbus: Ohio State
University Press.
Fitch, W. Tecumseh. 2016. Laryngeal Descent. In: Norman Li, Elisabeth Oberzaucher & Daniel Smith (eds.) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary
Psychological Science. Springer International Publishing.
Fitch, Tecumseh W. & David Reby. 2001. The descended larynx is not uniquely human. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B:
Biological Sciences 268. 1669-1675.
Hoff, Erika. 2012. Language Development. Belmont, CA.: Cengage Learning.
Lester, B.M., and L.L. LaGasse. 2008. Crying. Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development. Elsevier.
Lieberman, Philip. 2007. The Evolution of Human Speech: Its Anatomical and Neural Bases. Current Anthropology 48(1). 39-66.
Lieberman, D. E., R. C. McCarthy, K. Hiiemae & J. B. Palmer. 2001. Ontogeny of postnatal hyoid and larynx descent in humans. Archives of
Oral Biology, 46: 117–128.
Lieberman, Philip & Sheila E. Blumstein. 1988. Speech physiology, speech perception, and acoustic phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Lieberman, Philip, Daniel H. Klatt, William H. Wilson. 1969. Vocal tract limitations on the vowel repertoires of rhesus monkey and other
nonhuman primates. Science, 164: 1185–1187.
MacLarnon, Ann. 2012. The anatomical and physiological basis of human
speech production: adaptations and exaptations. In Maggie Tallerman & Kathleen R. Gibson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language
Evolution Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McMahon, April & Robert McMahon. 2013. Evolutionary Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Sasaki, C. T., P. A. Levine, J. T. Laitman & E. S. Crelin. 1977. Postnatal descent of the epiglottis in man: A preliminary report. Archives of
Otolaryngology, 103(3), 169–171.
Ventura, Sandra & Vasconcelos, Maria & Freitas, Diamantino & Ramos, Isabel & Tavares, Joao. 2011. Speaker-specific articulatory 30
assessment and measurements during Portuguese speech production based on Magnetic Resonance Images. In Leslie M. Warfelt
(ed.), Language Acquisition. Nova Science Publishers.