[ad_1]
The anatomy of the vocal apparatus shows a continuous and overlapping but identifiable variation between large ethnolinguistic groups. We show the results of the canonical variability analysis (CVA) of 57 classical anthropological measurements of the oral vocal tract derived from 3D intraoral oral scans of n = 94 participants in the ArtiVarK sample. [ref16], divided into four large self-declared ethnolinguistic groups. These groups are: "Ca" = European or North American of European origin, speaking Indo-European languages (mainly Germanic and Romance); "NI" = North Indian, speaking Indo-Aryan languages; "SI" = south of India, speaking Dravidian languages; and "C" = Chinese, speaking Sino-Tibetan languages. The panels (a) and (b) show the distribution of the participants (represented by their group) in the space of the first three Canonic axes (CV, explaining sequentially 49.3%, 37.6% and 13.1% variance); the solid polygons are the convex hulls and the colored ellipses are the 95% confidence ellipses. The panel (c) plots the posterior probabilities of each participant belonging to the four groups (vertical bars), while the symbols at the top indicate the actual group (squares) and the assigned group (circles, gray circles represent participants). aberrants "which can not be assigned to any group because they are below the continuous horizontal line of the 5% threshold); the horizontal dotted line indicates the probability of 1.0. In this case, CVA is very successful at recovering the groups despite some misclassification and "outliers" (overall classification accuracy of 84%) and, even if they overlap, the four groups are separated by the first three CVs. Credit: Dan Dediu / Scott Moisik
Why do languages sound so different when people all over the world have about the same organs of speech (mouth, lips, tongue and jaw)? Does the shape of our vocal apparatus explain some of the variation of speech sounds? In extreme individual cases, this is the case: when children are born with a cleft palate, the roof of the mouth is not well formed, which affects their speech. However, it is not clear if subtle anatomical differences between normal speakers play a role.
Language and speech are also shaped by the repeated use and transmission of parents to children. As the language is passed on to new generations, small differences can sometimes be amplified. This observation led a team at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, to wonder what was happening when tiny differences in anatomy of the vocal system encountered cultural transmission.
The team decided to focus on the influence of hard palate shape on how vowels are learned, articulated and transmitted through generations of artificial agents. Because altering the shape of the hard palate in human participants is ethically and virtually problematic, scientists have opted for a computer study to adapt an existing computer model of the vocal tract.
The team imported real hard palate models from over 100 MRI exams of human participants in the computer model. Through machine learning, they trained agents at the articulation of five common vowels, such as the sound "ee" in "beet" and the sound "oo" in "boot". Then a second generation tried to learn those particular vowels, which were then passed on to the next generation, and so on for 50 generations.
"It simulates a simple model of language change and evolution in a computer," says co-author Rick Janssen, currently a machine learning specialist at ALTEN and Philips Research in the Netherlands. Could subtle anatomical differences in the shape of the palate lead to differences in pronunciation? And above all, would these differences become more pronounced by repeated transmission?
Biology matters
The subtle differences in the shape of the hard palate actually influenced the precision with which the five vowels were articulated. It is important to note that the cultural transmission of speech sounds from one generation to the next amplified these small differences, even though the agents were actively seeking to compensate for the shape of their hard palates using other articulators (such as language). "Even small variations in the shape of our vocal tract can affect the way we speak, and it can even be amplified – over generations – in terms of differences between dialects and languages, so biology is important," says Lead author, Dan Dediu, currently at the Dynamic Language Laboratory, Université Lumière Lyon 2 in France.
According to the authors, this result could also help researchers better understand the effects of anatomical variation on speech and how to correct it if necessary, for example in the case of speech pathology, forensic linguistics and medicine. dental and postoperative recovery. Most importantly, the study underscores the importance of individual variation in speech and language in the context of our universal similarities: co-author Scott Moisik, currently at the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, concludes "We are all human and basically the same, we are also unique individuals, and we can really hear it."
The study is published in Nature human behavior.
The vocalizations of baboons contain five vowels similar to those of human speech
The low bias resulting from the anatomy of the vocal tract shapes the repeated transmission of vowels, Nature human behavior (2019). DOI: 10.1038 / s41562-019-0663-x, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0663-x
Quote:
Variations in the shape of speech organs influence the evolution of language (August 19, 2019)
recovered on August 19, 2019
from https://phys.org/news/2019-08-variation-speech-language-evolution.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair use for study or private research purposes, no
part may be reproduced without written permission. Content is provided for information only.
[ad_2]
Source link