Eve Spoke: Human Language and Human Evolution Review

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Eve Spoke: Human Language and Human Evolution ReviewI give this work a "C" because I expected more from a man who has spent most of his life engaged in the study of the evolution of human speech and language. This book is loosely constructed, as if the author dictated a few paragraphs over coffee each morning, with little apparent direction in mind other than discussing the overall, global idea that language and speech have evolved along with the anatomy of the head and neck. That's ok, however. This book is geared more to the average reader with some science background. He does a nice job discussing other research that was germinal to our present day understanding of speech perception and production. He reviews his own research on reconstruction of the vocal tracts in skulls of early man. Although his studies over 30 years, which suggested that the human larynx descended in order for human speech to develop, made him almost a popular science icon, alas, some of his work subsequently has been dismissed by various linguists and paleo-anthropologists.
For example, there is no reason why humans could not develop speech and language with a higher seated larynx. Indeed, a human can be understood while using just ONE vowel in running speech (this is in iximpil iv whit i min). And a language could be constructed around one vowel by simply making longer words. Also, humans who are adept at buccal speech (where the vocal tract is basically the oral cavity) can be readily understood.
It is true that a lowered larynx indeed allows more vowels to be produced and makes speech more efficient, but that does not prove that this was why the larynx descended. The larynx may have descended in order for humans to bellow out deeper nonspeech warning cries to predators. And, further, a higher larynx is not the reason chimps do not talk. That is to say, there is no reason to suspect that had their larynges moved South, nonhuman apes would begin conversing in human-like fashion. Lieberman points out that the chimp lacks higher cortical centers for speech and language, but he eschews a Chomsky-type innate language acquisition device. His arguments against this are interesting, if not compelling.
Certainly, articulators such as the tongue,velum, and lips, and the way they are articulated are far more critical to the production of speech than is the position of the larynx. Yet, the perception of speech takes place despite fairly sloppy articulation.
In Lieberman discussion of vocal tract normalization, he suggests Terrance Nearey (1978) first described this phenomenon, when, indeed, this concept was written up very nicely by Tim Rand in a Haskins Lab Research paper in 1970.
As Lieberman writes in the Coda of this book, "Evolution in itself has no direction." Despite his research and views, I believed the larynx gradually lowered in humans, but did not HAVE to. It just evolved that way and consequently made speech more efficient. Lips could have protruded more to lengthen the vocal tract (and thus allow more vowels), but, if anything, human lips, in general, have receded over time, not protruded. Yes, a lowered larynx increases the risk of choking to death, but does this really prove that the reward of more efficient speech is the underlying cause for this? Who knows?
What came first, the lowered larynx or language? I say, language, however "primitive" it may have been. What did Eve say to Adam? Obviously, she spoke the equivalent to "Yes" or we would not be here now. Lieberman is correct in saying there may have been many Adams and Eves over the past five million years. He exhibits his humane side when he adds "We are not the lords of creation, made in God's image because we talk, masters of the birds and beasts, which cannot speak. The purpose of human life is surely that we must use the gift of speech, language and thought to act to enhance life and love, to vanquish needless suffering and murderous violence - to achieve a yet higher morality." He may be stretching it a bit here, but it would be nice to think he is right.Eve Spoke: Human Language and Human Evolution Overview

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