Prolegomena to a Theory of the Sound Pattern of the First Spoken Language
-
Peter F. MacNeilage
Abstract
Although it would seem fundamental to the understanding of human beings, there has been virtually no attempt, in modern science, to develop a theory regarding the sound pattern of the first language. As a step towards such a theory, I suggest that ontogeny may recapitulate phylogeny. I propose that the pattern of open/close alternation of the mandible underlying the syllable which first appears in infants at the babbling stage is the missing link in the evolution of speech from ancestral primate vocal signals. In addition, I suggest that the conjoint set of sounds and sound patterns favored in babbling and early words, and in the world’s languages, constitutes, in effect, the fossil record of true speech, and I provide a tentative enumeration of this set.
verified
© 1994 S. Karger AG, Basel
Articles in the same Issue
- Special Section
- Contents, Vol. 51, No.1-3, 1991
- Paper
- Editors’ Introduction
- ‘Speaker’ and ‘Speech’ Characteristics: A Deductive Approach
- From EMG to Formant Patterns of Vowels: The Implication of Vowel Spaces
- Individual Variation in Measures of Voice
- Glottal Stops and Glottalization in German
- Tongue Body Kinematics in Velar Stop Production: Influences of Consonant Voicing and Vowel Context
- What’s in a Schwa?
- Durational Correlates of Quantity in Swedish, Finnish and Estonian: Cross-Language Evidence for a Theory of Adaptive Dispersion
- Evidence for the Adaptive Nature of Speech on the Phrase Level and Below
- Some Distributional Facts about Fricatives and a Perceptual Explanation
- Listeners’ Normalization of Vowel Quality Is Influenced by ‘Restored’ Consonantal Context
- The Phonological Reality of Locus Equations across Manner Class Distinctions: Preliminary Observations
- Musical Significance of Musicians’ Syllable Choice in Improvised Nonsense Text Singing: A Preliminary Study
- Cross-Language Differences in Phonological Acquisition: Swedish and American /t/
- The Nature and Origins of Ambient Language Influence on Infant Vocal Production and Early Words
- Conventional, Biological and Environmental Factors in Speech Communication: A Modulation Theory
- Prolegomena to a Theory of the Sound Pattern of the First Spoken Language
Articles in the same Issue
- Special Section
- Contents, Vol. 51, No.1-3, 1991
- Paper
- Editors’ Introduction
- ‘Speaker’ and ‘Speech’ Characteristics: A Deductive Approach
- From EMG to Formant Patterns of Vowels: The Implication of Vowel Spaces
- Individual Variation in Measures of Voice
- Glottal Stops and Glottalization in German
- Tongue Body Kinematics in Velar Stop Production: Influences of Consonant Voicing and Vowel Context
- What’s in a Schwa?
- Durational Correlates of Quantity in Swedish, Finnish and Estonian: Cross-Language Evidence for a Theory of Adaptive Dispersion
- Evidence for the Adaptive Nature of Speech on the Phrase Level and Below
- Some Distributional Facts about Fricatives and a Perceptual Explanation
- Listeners’ Normalization of Vowel Quality Is Influenced by ‘Restored’ Consonantal Context
- The Phonological Reality of Locus Equations across Manner Class Distinctions: Preliminary Observations
- Musical Significance of Musicians’ Syllable Choice in Improvised Nonsense Text Singing: A Preliminary Study
- Cross-Language Differences in Phonological Acquisition: Swedish and American /t/
- The Nature and Origins of Ambient Language Influence on Infant Vocal Production and Early Words
- Conventional, Biological and Environmental Factors in Speech Communication: A Modulation Theory
- Prolegomena to a Theory of the Sound Pattern of the First Spoken Language
