18 Speech is Special : What ’ s Special about It ?

From the ethologist perspective, speech is to the human being as echolocation is to the bat or song is to the bird. Thus, speech, as well as the phonological communication it underlies, is plainly a species-typical product of evolution. Speech defined as the production and perception of vowels and consonants originates from a pre-phonetic capacity to perform speech sounds and gestures. Similarly, language defined as the syntax "machine" originates from a pre-syntactic capacity to organize longer sequences of sounds and gestures. We suggest therefore that the faculty of human language is biological and thus a product of evolution. Furthermore we suggest that formal language follows from speech which is based on motion (gestures) and perception of motion (sensorymotor perception of articulatory gestures).