Losing parts of our voice box may have helped humans evolve to speak
Losing parts of our voice box may have helped humans evolve to speak
- August 11, 2022
- Richard Futrell, language science, New Scientist, Aug. 11, 2022
-----
“A key thing that distinguishes human speech from animal sounds is our fine-grained control over the sounds we make. That is only possible if our vocal apparatus is easy for our brains to control,” says Richard Futrell, [associate professor of language science] at the University of California, Irvine. “If the system is complex, then it will behave in a way that is chaotic and unpredictable.”
For the full story, please visit https://www.newscientist.com/article/2333278-losing-parts-of-our-voice-box-may-have-helped-humans-evolve-to-speak/.
-----
Would you like to get more involved with the social sciences? Email us at communications@socsci.uci.edu to connect.
Share on:
Related News Items
- Futrell receives grant for large language model study
- Can AI models show us how people learn? Impossible languages point a way.
- What is language, and how human constraints shape it?
- Computational language science post-baccalaureate program launches at UC Irvine
- Hand gestures may have been the start of human language
connect with us: