ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2021
The vocal tract as a time machine: inferences about past speech and language from the anatomy of the speech organs.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Toward an evolutionary account of the changes in the human pitch vocal system.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Reconstructing prehistoric languages.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Inferring recent evolutionary changes in speech sounds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Constructing a protolanguage: reconstructing prehistoric languages in a usage-based construction grammar framework.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Language evolution: examining the link between cross-modality and aggression through the lens of disorders.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
While speech and language do not fossilize, they still leave traces that can be extracted and interpreted. Here, we suggest that the shape of the hard structures of the vocal tract may also allow inferences about the speech of long-gone humans. These build on recent experimental and modelling studies, showing that there is extensive variation between individuals in the precise shape of the vocal tract, and that this variation affects speech and language. In particular, we show that detailed anatomical information concerning two components of the vocal tract (the lower jaw and the hard palate) can be extracted and digitized from the osteological remains of three historical populations from The Netherlands, and can be used to conduct three-dimensional biomechanical simulations of vowel production. We could recover the signatures of inter-individual variation between these vowels, in acoustics and articulation. While 'proof-of-concept', this study suggests that older and less well-preserved remains could be used to draw inferences about historic and prehistoric languages. Moreover, it forces us to clarify the meaning and use of the uniformitarian principle in linguistics, and to consider the wider context of language use, including the anatomy, physiology and cognition of the speakers. This article is part of the theme issue 'Reconstructing prehistoric languages'.
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