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The Dawn of Speech is Older Than We Thought| old_uid | 18265 |
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| title | The Dawn of Speech is Older Than We Thought |
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| start_date | 2020/03/27 |
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| schedule | 11h-14h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle des voûtes |
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| summary | The production of speech repurposes an entire set of anatomical features that are primarily used for vital functions: breathing, sucking, chewing and swallowing. Hypotheses about the dawn of speech try to determine the period during which our ancestors began to produce, by exaptation, differentiated vocalizations associated with different social relationships. Anatomical and acoustic analyses of baboon vocalizations tend to show that the sounds themselves and the articulatory gestures that produce them are comparable to those of human vowels. If we interpret these vocalizations as audio fossils, the beginnings of speech would date back more than 20 million years, to the period when our ape ancestors separated from old world monkeys. The recent work that underlies this hypothesis invalidates a long controversy that motivated several multidisciplinary teams. By breaking the anatomical lock that claimed to restrict production of non-human primates’ vocalizations, they have opened the doors to many avenues of research that had previously seemed blocked. |
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| responsibles | Bureau |
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