By modeling the sounds that a Neanderthal larynx would have made, McCarthy’s team engineered the sound of a Neanderthal saying “e.”Wow. Click here for the sound!
In contrast to a modern human “e,” the Neanderthal version lacks a quantal hallmark, which helps a listener distinguish the word “beat” from “bit,” for instance.
McCarthy, who based his reconstructions on 50,000-year-old fossils from France, aims eventually to simulate an entire Neanderthal sentence.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
"Linguistic reconstruction" gets a whole new meaning
If you don't read the ads-l, you should see this and/or this for work by Robert McCarthy at Florida Atlantic. He's using fossils to model Neanderthal sound production, an issue we've brushed up against here before (along with other blogs).
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6 comments:
wow a whole sentence. so... Neanderthal fossils tell us everything about their grammar!
Like I said, "a whole new meaning". I'm still trying to track down a fuller account of this stuff.
Wait, I thought April Fools Day was nearly a month ago!
Hmmmm, good point …
I find it utterly unsurprising that people whose fossils were found in France couldn't distinguish between [i:] as in "beat" and [I] as in "bit".
These scientists should try with Neanderthal fossils found somewhere else.
Brilliant!!! And your message clears up a big question Goofy and I both had: How do we know what language the reconstructed sentence will be in.
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