[language] [Fwd:Chimp Study Yields Clues to Evolution of Human Speech]

[H.M. Hubey]

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Scientific American

May 27, 2003
Chimp Study Yields Clues to Evolution of Human Speech


chimp
Image: COURTESY OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

We humans are nothing if not talkative. Indeed, it's one of our most
salient characteristics as a species. But exactly how we came to be so
chatty is less obvious. Despite decades of research into the subject,
anthropologists are still struggling to reconstruct the chain of events
that produced our unique oral capabilities. Now the results of a new
study suggest that one part of the story they thought they had nailed in
fact needs revision.

Conventional wisdom holds that the repositioning of the human larynx
that occurs during infancy--a key morphological prerequisite to
speech--is particular to our kind. But Takeshi Nishimura of Kyoto
University in Japan and colleagues have discovered that this southward
migration of the larynx to a spot between the pharynx and the lungs
occurs in our speechless relative the chimpanzee, too. The team employed
magnetic resonance imaging (see image) to track development in three
chimps during the first two years of life.

Full text
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00018313-7C84-1ED3-8E1C809EC588EF21
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00018313-7C84-1ED3-8E1C809EC588EF21>


News in Brain and Behavioural Sciences - Issue 96 - 19th May, 2003
http://human-nature.com/nibbs/issue96.html
Human Nature Review http://human-nature.com/
Evolutionary Psychology http://human-nature.com/ep/

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--
Mark Hubey
hubeyh at mail.montclair.edu
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~hubey



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