On the origin of internal structure of word forms

Science

Volumn 288, Issue 5465, 2000, Pages 527-531

  MacNeilage, Peter F ^a   Davis, Barbara L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CONSONANT; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SPEECH; VOWEL; WORD RECOGNITION;

BIOMECHANICS; HUMANS; INFANT; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; LIP; MANDIBLE; MOVEMENT; PHONETICS; SPEECH; TONGUE;

EID: 0034697024     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.288.5465.527     Document Type: Article

References (49)

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4. First (single) words are produced during the period of roughly 12 to 18 months of age.
5. B. L. Davis, P. F. MacNeilage, C. L. Matyear, in preparation.
6. A preliminary report (7) on 4 of the 10 subjects in (5) shows similar results to those found for the larger group.
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11. Four other studies (12-15) often confirm our results but also show a number of counterexamples and null findings, many of which may be a result of methodological factors. [This issue is discussed in (26).]
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23. According to frame/content theory, mandibular cyclicity may have evolved from ingestive processes (chewing, sucking, licking) through visuofacial communicative gestures (e.g., lip-smacks), common in other primates, before being paired with vocal-fold vibrations to form protosyllables.
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32. P. F. MacNeilage and B. L. Davis, in Developmental Neurocognition: Speech and Face Processing in the First Year of Life, B. de Boysson-Bardies, S. de Schonen, P. Jusczyk, P. F. MacNeilage, J. Morton, Eds. (Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1993), pp. 123-137.
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39. "Multilateral comparison" is comparison of sound-meaning relationships in the basic vocabularies of large sets of existing languages.
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46. For many years, the accepted view [e.g., (45)] was that true speech became possible not because of organizational changes but because the evolution of a two-tube vocal tract made enough sounds available to produce a full language. In particular, the capacity to produce the three "point vowels" (those in "beet," "boot," and "box") has been considered criterial for a full speech capacity. But computer modeling studies have now shown (48) that the one-tubed vocal tract of a newborn infant is capable of producing the point vowels. The criterion for whether the model produces the point vowels is perceptual. We have heard a recording of the output of the model and concur that it does. The one-tubed vocal tracts of monkeys have shapes similar to that of the newborn infant, implying that they too are anatomically capable of making the point vowels.
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49. Supported in part by NIH grant RO1 HD 27733-07. We thank J. Trimble for his help in revising the manuscript.