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DividedQuantum
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Registered: 12/06/13
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Macaque monkeys have the anatomy for human speech 1
#23925361 - 12/14/16 09:34 AM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Macaque monkeys have the anatomy for human speech, so why can’t they speak?
http://www.kurzweilai.net/macaque-monkeys-have-the-anatomy-for-human-speech-so-why-cant-they-speak
While they have a speech-ready vocal tract, primates can’t speak because they lack a speech-ready brain, contrary to widespread opinion that they are limited by anatomy, researchers at Princeton University and associates have reported Dec. 9 in the open-access journal Science Advances.
The researchers reached this conclusion by first recording X-ray videos showing the movements of the different parts of a macaque’s vocal anatomy — such as the tongue, lips and larynx. They then converted that data into a computer model that could predict and simulate a macaque’s vocal range.
The model was used to create computer-generated audio clips that simulate what a macaque might sound like if it could speak, compared to a human female. The clearly audible phrase: “Will you marry me?”
The researchers found that a macaque would be able to produce comprehensible vowel sounds — and even full sentences — with its vocal tract if it had the neural ability to speak, according to co-corresponding author Asif Ghazanfar, a Princeton University professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.
“The key conclusion from our study is that the basic primate vocal production apparatus is easily capable of producing five clearly distinguishable vowels … the worldwide norm for human languages, and many of the world’s languages make do with only three vowels,” the researchers note in their paper. “The common stop consonants (/p/, /b/, /k/, and /g/) along with a variety of other consonantal sounds (for example, /h/, /m/, and /w/) would be easily attainable by a macaque monkey.”
The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health and European Research Council advanced and starting grants.
Abstract of Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready
For four decades, the inability of nonhuman primates to produce human speech sounds has been claimed to stem from limitations in their vocal tract anatomy, a conclusion based on plaster casts made from the vocal tract of a monkey cadaver. We used x-ray videos to quantify vocal tract dynamics in living macaques during vocalization, facial displays, and feeding. We demonstrate that the macaque vocal tract could easily produce an adequate range of speech sounds to support spoken language, showing that previous techniques based on postmortem samples drastically underestimated primate vocal capabilities. Our findings imply that the evolution of human speech capabilities required neural changes rather than modifications of vocal anatomy. Macaques have a speech-ready vocal tract but lack a speech-ready brain to control it.
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Chakanooga
Always Lmao



Registered: 04/24/15
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Re: Macaque monkeys have the anatomy for human speech [Re: DividedQuantum]
#23925773 - 12/14/16 12:07 PM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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Its probably their fate to never adapt to language and speech, its just not in their genetics, they just wanna climb trees and throw poop all day.
I can however, see a macaque monkey operating computer technology just like Stephen hawkings...that's a possibility...
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ReposadoXochipilli
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Re: Macaque monkeys have the anatomy for human speech [Re: Chakanooga]
#23945066 - 12/21/16 01:08 AM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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I think it maybe has more to do with the need to communicate that comes with a society, hence words or sounds having meaning attached that the group agrees upon. Without that consent to what something means you are left with a much more basic system of noises to convey a much broader and ambigious meaning to communicate.
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