VOCALISATION
المؤلف:
John Field
المصدر:
Psycholinguistics
الجزء والصفحة:
P323
2025-10-26
40
VOCALISATION
The uttering of a stretch of sound. Sometimes, more narrowly, the use of the vocal cords to produce a voiced sound.
One type of human vocalisation is reflexive and, like the calls of many mammals, difficult to suppress. An example is laughter. By contrast, speech is voluntary. Though it is a highly automatic set of motor behaviours, it can be modified and turned on and off at will. This is possible because it is regulated by the cortex of the human brain. The calls of other species are mainly controlled by subcortical areas and are thus, like human laughter, difficult to inhibit. The cortical areas of most mammals do indeed control movement of the oral muscles; but the purpose is mainly to regulate eating and grooming.
At birth, the human larynx begins quite high, preventing food from entering the windpipe of the new-born child. It gradually moves downwards, however, to occupy a lower position than in other species. This enables us to produce a much wider range of sounds. The lowered larynx was not present in early homo erectus, suggesting that, if language existed at that stage of evolution, it was much more limited, particularly in the range of vowels.
Humans have a much greater degree of voluntary control over the sounds produced in the larynx than do other species. They also possess the ability to co-ordinate breathing and speaking. Separate systems control the reflexive behaviour involved in breathing and swallowing and the voluntary behaviour involved in the articulation of speech.
See also: Articulation, Evolution of language
Further reading: Deacon (1997); Lieberman (1998)
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