Chimpanzee utterances refute purported missing links for novel vocalizations and syllabic speech.

Autor: Ekström AG; Speech, Music & Hearing, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Lindstedtsvägen 24, 118 28, Stockholm, Sweden. axeleks@kth.se., Gannon C; Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK., Edlund J; Speech, Music & Hearing, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Lindstedtsvägen 24, 118 28, Stockholm, Sweden., Moran S; Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.; Department of Anthropology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, USA., Lameira AR; Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Scientific reports [Sci Rep] 2024 Jul 25; Vol. 14 (1), pp. 17135. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 25.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-67005-w
Abstrakt: Nonhuman great apes have been claimed to be unable to learn human words due to a lack of the necessary neural circuitry. We recovered original footage of two enculturated chimpanzees uttering the word "mama" and subjected recordings to phonetic analysis. Our analyses demonstrate that chimpanzees are capable of syllabic production, achieving consonant-to-vowel phonetic contrasts via the simultaneous recruitment and coupling of voice, jaw and lips. In an online experiment, human listeners naive to the recordings' origins reliably perceived chimpanzee utterances as syllabic utterances, primarily as "ma-ma", among foil syllables. Our findings demonstrate that in the absence of direct data-driven examination, great ape vocal production capacities have been underestimated. Chimpanzees possess the neural building blocks necessary for speech.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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