媒体英语 Orangutan squeaks reveal language evolution, says study 科学家称红毛猩猩叫声揭示人类早期语言进化过程

Play audio file 文字稿 科学家们用数年时间仔细聆听了我们的类人猿近亲 —— 红毛猩猩与同伴交流时发出的尖叫声，该研究为解释人类语言的形成过程提供了线索。英国杜伦大学的阿德里亚诺·拉梅哈（ Adriano Reis e Lameira ）博士录制并分析了这些动物发出的近  5000 段“吻叫”，它们双唇紧闭的嘴型很像人类语言中辅音的发声方式。他还发现红毛猩猩会通过组合音节向同伴传达不同的信息。请听 Victoria Gill 的报道。

The researchers spent thousands of hours listening to these communicative ‘kiss squeaks’, analysing almost 5,000 squeaks from 48 individual orangutans.

They homed in on these sounds in particular because they’re formed in a similar way to our consonants. Just like our /t/ and /p/ sounds, kiss squeaks are made using the lips and tongue to control air flow rather than using the voice in calling out.

With this painstaking listening exercise and observing the animals as they communicated, the team revealed that orangutans combine multiple kiss squeaks in different orders, apparently conveying different messages. The scientists say that’s an early glimpse of how our ancestors began to combine consonants and vowels, and that these could be the purse-lipped building blocks of our very earliest multi-syllable words.

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