All of the world’s spoken languages are made up of vowels and consonants, but The prototypical call repertoire of non-human primates consists almost entirely of vowel-like calls.. What was the origin of the consonants? New research on orangutan communication, origins of human speech.
Vowels are produced by the larynx (predominantly vocal cords), while consonants are produced in the mouth with the help of supralaryngeal articulators (lips, tongue, palate, chin…).
Non-human primates often make vowel-like sounds., but also some of them are slightly similar to consonants. This last situation basic human-like abilitiespossibly shared by a common ancestor.
The variety and frequency of use of consonants varies according to species, and this opens the door to the investigation of evolutionary mechanisms. But it must be done with wild animals, because All great apes in captivity are capable of social learning and even inventing new consonant-like calls..
The study, led by Adriano Lameira, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Warwick, revealed that: The most arboreal of the great apes, orangutans make more frequent and more diverse consonant-like sounds than their land-dwelling African “cousins.”gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees.
This finding contradicts the expectation that African apes, more closely related to humans, should have call repertoires more similar to those of the human lineage.
The arboreal lifestyle led the great apes to develop more vocal repertoires than ground-dwelling apes, with large and diverse inventories of consonant-like calls, the researchers say.
tree-dwelling ancestors of humans
The study also suggests that: Human evolutionary ancestors may have had more tree-dwelling lifestyles than previously thought..
Wild specimens of the Pongo genus produce consonant-like calls in many contexts, from building their nests to communication between mothers and cubs. The most common type of call is a consonant-like alarm call.
The prevalence and diversity of consonant-like sounds is much lower in wild gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. In gorillas, only a few populations record a single consonant-like putative cultural call.
As for chimpanzees, some populations make one or two consonant-like calls (with possible subvariants) in a single context (for example, social grooming).
“Only in wild orangutans consonant-like calls are universal, cultural, and occur in multiple contexts such as human speech.” takes the work.
“Until now, existing theories of speech evolution have only Link between primate larynx anatomy and human use of vowels. But that doesn’t explain how consonant-like sounds have become an essential component of all languages spoken worldwide,” says Lameira.
Working with wild orangutans for 18 years, the researcher discovered that they use consonant-like invocations for “universal and consistent and multiple behaviors in different populations, just as humans do with speech.” His vocal repertoire is a rich, complex and sophisticated display of clickers, kissing sounds, chatter and trumpets.‘ he points.
The “fifth hand” of the orangutans
Their way of life, orangutans with their mouths “fifth hand“Because it has to constantly use at least one of its limbs to stay stationary among the trees,” Lameira says.
Because of this limitation Orangutans have developed more control over their lips, tongue and jaw “They can use their mouths as a fifth hand to hold food and move tools.”
“Orangutans are only known to peel oranges with their lips. Their sensitive oral neuromotor control has evolved to be far superior to that of African apes and an integral part of their biology.”
Studies show that living in trees could have been a “prep” for the emergence of consonants and, by extension, for the evolution of speech in our human ancestors.
“The possibility that life in the trees provided the necessary preadaptations for spoken language, human ancestors were more arboreal than African apesdespite the close phylogenetic relationship,” says the study.
“At the same time, the invention and imitation of consonant-like sounds in all great apes (including humans) in captivity suggests that the adoption of consonant-like sounds, whose lifespan is essentially terrestrial, may have been directed during development learning and practice,” adds Lameirr.
“Therefore, the rich interactions between innate, epigenetic and social factors that support infants’ language acquisition may already be (at least in part) playing a role in pre-speech ancestral hominins.”
The article titled ‘The Arboreal origin of consonants and thus of speech’ was published in ‘Trends in Cognitive Sciences’.‘.
Reference report: https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(22)00297-2
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Source: Informacion
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