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Alex Gendler explains how linguists group languages into language families, demonstrating how these linguistic trees give us crucial insights into the past. Lesson by Alex Gendler,...
- 4 min
- 3.1M
- TED-Ed
Psychologist and author, Michael Corballis explores the many theories of language's origins, including his own, and details how language and communication have continued to evolve, from...
- 17 min
- 418.1K
- TEDx Talks
Jul 3, 2023 · Join us on an incredible journey through time as we explore "The Evolution of Language." In this captivating YouTube video, we dive deep into the origins, de...
- 3 min
- 169
- Spanish And You Official
- When and Where Did Human Speech Evolve?
- Which Speech Sounds Were First uttered?
- So, When Did The Other Speech Sounds Evolve?
- How Did Humans Communicate Before Clicks?
- And The Use of Full Grammatical Language?
- Why Does This All Matter?
Research carried out for this study indicates that the first speech sounds were uttered about 70,000 years ago, and not hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, as is sometimes claimed in the literature. While my research has been primarily based on phonetic (speech sounds) and linguistic (language) analyses, it has also taken into account o...
The very first speech sounds ever produced were not just random involuntary sounds. Underlying these speech sounds was a fledgling network that connected certain areas of the brain to different parts of the vocal tract. Various anatomical and environmental factors contributed to Homo sapiens’ability to produce speech sounds for the first time ever....
This study demonstrates that the production of all the other human speech sounds (the other consonants, as well as all the vowels) began to take place from approximately 50,000 years ago. This was dependent on the gradual development of a well-proportioned vocal tractwhich included the mouth, the area behind the mouth (the pharynx), the nasal passa...
Before this, the only sounds humans could produce were the so-called “vocalisations” or vocal calls. Those were imitations or mimics of various actions or sounds that humans were exposed to in their environment. Read more: The first-ever dictionary of South Africa's Kaaps language has launched - why it matters They may have also been involuntary so...
As the different speech sounds evolved, they combined in various ways to form syllables and words. And these in turn combined with each other in different ways to generate the structural types of grammatical sentences that characterise modern languages. The initial ability to produce speech sounds was the spark that led to the gradual evolution of ...
The utterance of the very first speech sounds about 70,000 years ago was the beginning of a journey that was to lead to the evolution of human language. Language has provided the medium of communication that has played a pivotal role in the momentous developments that have taken place from the earliest known “written” records that we have access to...
- George Poulos
How language transformed humanity. Biologist Mark Pagel shares an intriguing theory about why humans evolved our complex system of language. He suggests that language is a piece of "social technology" that allowed early human tribes to access a powerful new tool: cooperation.
Psychologist and author, Michael Corballis explores the many theories of language's origins, including his own, and details how language and communication have continued to evolve, from primates' use of gestures, to the advent of communicative technologies.
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How did language evolve from human ancestors?
How did language evolve?
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Over the course of human history, thousands of languages have developed from what was once a much smaller number. How did we end up with so many? And how do we keep track of them all? Alex Gendler explains how linguists group languages into language families, demonstrating how these linguistic trees.
