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Computers Emulate Neanderthal Speech
Clarence writes "After some 30,000 years of silence, the Neanderthal race is once again speaking thanks to some advanced computer simulation. A Florida Atlantic University professor is using software vocal tract reconstructions to emulate the speech of our long-dead distant relatives. 'He says the ancient human's speech lacked the "quantal vowel" sounds that underlie modern speech. Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another, says Robert McCarthy, who was talking at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio, on April 11. In the 1970s, linguist Phil Lieberman, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, inferred the dimensions of the larynx of a Neanderthal based on its skull. His team concluded that Neanderthal speech did not have the subtlety of modern human speech.'"
I'm imagining, then, that it sounded something like "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."
[ducks]
I can see the fnords!
Computers are already cryptic enough when they speak normal English. I'd rather not have to hear one say "Me get segfault. Me dump core."
If he can take the vocal tract of a fresh cadaver, and using only that, comes up with software that says "Nice weather we're having, eh wot?" then I'll be impressed... Otherwise, how can we verify his claims?
Let me guess.. the simulator immediately tried to sell people car insurance.
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Anyone else find it funny that the Neanderthal sounds oddly familiar.
It's remarkable that they were able to get that close to the actual sound. I feel like I've gone back in time hearing that reproduction.
Who would have guessed.
I wonder if early humans, such as Neanderthals, communicated primarily by speech or by a combination of speech and hand signals. The fact that human infants as young as 7 months (at the extreme) are capable of communication by signs, even before they are able to talk, suggests to me that language ability in humans might have evolved prior to the development of a modern vocal tract.
I would not be surprised, if we could go back in time, to see early humans communicating primarily by signs, with vocal communication only as a backup. After all, you don't want to make noise when hunting game anyway.
Throw in a Tuvan throat singer, an Aussie with a digidiroo, and Hal, and we'll have oen halluv an ensemble going.
(Oh, throw in Shatner with some Esperanto, too... and some Kirk-being-stunned-on-heavy break dance...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I think that Caucasians have lots of Neanderthal genes. We are so big and bulky compared to other regions...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's well-established in our cartoons and such that neanderthals often use the objective "me" rather than nominative "I", i.e. "me doug". Looks like the verb of being wasn't invented yet, either...
Do you have ESP?
Le Ugh? Or El Ugh?!?
That's assuming that "Ugh" is masculine. Maybe, the Neanderthals had different genders for their nouns.
Honestly. Neanderthal man lacked our subtlty?
Color me shocked.
What were they expecting? Cavemen who recited poetry?
I see some posts about how it's not surprising that Neanderthal speech wasn't surprising, and what did they expect, poetry?
This research isn't about what the Neanderthals said - it's about the kinds of sounds they were able to produce with their vocal tracts (or Liberman's models of them). The lack of subtlety is the lack of the ability to produce recognizably distinct vowel sounds.
Insensitive Clod.
/. is sort of a rolling asshat conference, but you'd think someone would at least bother to check Wikipedia.
I mean, I know
Andre had pituitary gigantism. His "phenotype" was not related to his ancestry, but rather to the crippling growth hormone disorder that caused acromegaly, along with the heart problems that would kill him eventually.
Although this doesn't make the simulation any less interesting, the article is misleading:
Neanderthals are not really "ancient humans", they are a different branch of the hominid line that probably co-existed with our ancestors.
I suppose it is fitting for an anthropologist but I also find it a bit anthroprocentric that because the simulation suggests they did not produce the same types of sounds as humans that they somehow did not have subtleties in their language nor could they have a spoken language. It is possible they simply spoke to one another differently (maybe in Morse Code using grunts and whistles).
"I say, unhand me you confounded, unsanitary homonid!"
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Ow! Me no want micro-sloth windows. Ow! Me no want micro-sloth office.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Still hiding away in his cave. Working on his audio format.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
This assumes several things. It assumes phonemes were used, for example. There's an island where the native language is communicated by whistles. The language, if I recall the article correctly, is descended from Spanish. The series of whistles constitute a series of samples at regular intervals along Spanish words, so there is a 1:1 translation between the two. Whistles, of course, do not use phonemes at all and therefore such a form of communication is not subject to the intelligability of sounds. (All I need is one example to prove that there exists a real, plausible solution that violates the assumptions made. I don't need to prove that the solution actually applied to Neanderthals, so long as my attempt to falsify really is plausible.)
If phonemes were used, then it assumes that language drifted sufficiently for a communication barrier to exist. That's more reasonable. Neanderthals didn't have that much mobility, so maintaining a unified language and accent across the entire space they occupied, over the entire time Neanderthals existed, would likely have been impossible. I can buy into the idea of there being sufficient drift to cause problems over a large enough distance, but if there is an intelligability problem and communication with nearest neighbour is absolutely essential, that drift was locked within certain parameters and (if you want to look at it in modern networking terms) could not have exceeded some limit on a per-hop basis. That might be an interesting result to have.
It also assumes that the constraints were the same. Modern languages are heavily based on very complex grammars and therefore don't need a particularly wide range of sounds or symbols. Very early written languages directly descend from pictographic systems and require a considerably greater number of symbols and signifiers. By inference, I'm going to say that very early spoken languages would also use a much wider range of sounds and fewer rules for inferring a specific meaning for a specific sound in a specific context. If that is correct, and the parent poster seems to have vastly more knowledge on this than I do so can probably answer this, it should be much rarer for two distinct words to sound alike enough to be confusing even with different accents.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A few things I'd like to say. Firstly Neanderthals have suffered a lot of bad press over the years. The word itself is often used to describe "Homer Simpson" type people, i.e. stupid.
What most people aren't aware of is that when compared by cc Neanderthal brains were, in fact, larger than those of modern humans. You and I have a mass of around 1400cc, a Neanderthal 1500cc. (a rough guess, anthropology classes were a long time ago) How much of this is extra mass is related to them having more musculature thus greater need for control, we don't really know.
Still, they were certainly smart. As far as culture goes, Neanderthals had rudimentary technology and more importantly they had ritual. Graves show that they buried their dead with flowers and other trinkets. This suggests some concept of "remorse" or even the afterlife. These are clearly human traits, so they were obviously closer to us in thinking than other apes.
On the main subject of Neanderthal language. Well, there's a theory that it is not, in fact, an extinct language at all. In northern Spain and southern France there's a strange "language islote" called Basque. As far as modern linguists are concerned this language exists in a little language family of its own, totally unrelated to any other in the global family. It certainly pre-dates the Indo-European languages that are prevalent in most of Europe. This raises another question is: What is the Origin of the Basques? Who knows?
However, it may JUST be coincidence that the last (as far as archaeologists can tell) Neanderthals lived in Iberia. So is Basque is the linguistic cockroach - staying alive when all around it dies? Who knows. There is some strange evidence. Basque people have a 55% O blood group - the highest percentage in the world, which suggests some genetic differentiation from the rest of us. In a nut shell, though, we really don't have a clue.
Now thats funny ... since the rest of the world initially identifies a Canadian accent as a USA one!
The majority of google hits for the phrase are in reference to this paper.
Of the remaining hundred or so, most use the term in quotes without actually
iving a definition... All I've been able to determine is that y is qunatal &
e is not. Spectacular!
Were that I say, pancakes?
Vote Republican.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Snu-Snu.