Phonetic Ability and Related Anatomy of the Newborn and Adult Human, Neanderthal Man, and the Chimpanzee

The sounds of human speech make human language a rapid medium of communication through a process o f speech “encoding. I t The presence of sounds like the vowels [a] , [ i ] , and [u] makes this process possible. The supralaryngeal vocal tracts o f newborn Homo sapiens and chimpanzee are similar and resemble the reconstructed vocal tract o f the fossil La Chapellmux-Saints Neanderthal man. Vocal tract area functions that were directed toward making best possible approximations to the human vowels [aJ, [ i ] , and ( u ] , as well as certain consonantal configurations, were modeled by means of a computer program. The lack of these vowels in the phonetic repertories of these creatures, who lack a supralaryngeal pharyngeal region like that o f adult Homo sapiens, may be concomitant with the absence of speech encoding and a consequently linguistic ability inferior lo modern man.