What's special about human speech? A student exercise for comparing speech production between humans and chimpanzees.

J Acoust Soc Am

Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, 2631 East Discovery Parkway, Bloomington, Indiana 47408, USA.

Published: May 2024

Modern humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor on the phylogenetic tree, yet chimpanzees do not spontaneously produce speech or speech sounds. The lab exercise presented in this paper was developed for undergraduate students in a course entitled "What's Special About Human Speech?" The exercise is based on acoustic analyses of the words "cup" and "papa" as spoken by Viki, a home-raised, speech-trained chimpanzee, as well as the words spoken by a human. The analyses allow students to relate differences in articulation and vocal abilities between Viki and humans to the known anatomical differences in their vocal systems. Anatomical and articulation differences between humans and Viki include (1) potential tongue movements, (2) presence or absence of laryngeal air sacs, (3) presence or absence of vocal membranes, and (4) exhalation vs inhalation during production.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11219077PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0026020DOI Listing

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