Environment and Climate Helped Shape Varied Evolution of Human Languages
Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - 10:00
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Researchers have examined the relationship between the sound structures of a worldwide sample of human languages and climatic and ecological factors including temperature, precipitation, vegetation and geomorphology. The results, to be presented at ASA's 2015 Fall Meeting, Nov. 2-6, show a correlation between ecological factors and the ratio of sonorant segments to obstruent segments in the examined languages. This supports the hypothesis that acoustic adaptation to the environment plays a role in the evolution of human languages.