Re: Hobbits spoke ?

----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, October 29, 2004 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: Hobbits spoke ?


> On Thursday, October 28, 2004, at 07:53 , Rodlox wrote:
>
> [snip]
> >  and would these "Hobbits" and Neandertals have spoken more in their
> > throats
> > or with the fronts of their mouths (principally dental sounds), given
> > their
> > voice box placement?
>
> The placement of our voice boxes does not limit us to either the front of
> the mouth or just to the throat. We use the _whole_ of the vocal tract
> from the nose and lips right through to the glottis.
 okay,  I phrased the question wrong...we use the whole of the vocal
tract...but does the placement of the voice box at all affect/effect our
range of sounds?


> If they were limited
> to the front of the mouth, it implies their voice box was situated there,
> which seems to me quite improbable. If their voice box was in the throat
> (as I assume it was), why, if they were capable of speech, should the
> so-called 'Hobbits' and of Neanderthals not have used the whole vocal
> tract just as we do?
>
> >  just wondering.
>
> The only way to satisfy your curiosity will be to discover the secret of
> time-travel   :)
 already did that...but somebody else is renting that era of time, so other
time travelers can't use it.

> As for the Neanderthals, on the one hand I have seen it confidently stated
> that their primitive social structure did not require communication any
> more sophisticated than that of modern apes & chimps and that the anatomy
> of their skulls did not permit the range of human sounds
 ahh, the old hyloid bone debate.  :)


> The simple fact is that we just do not know what their language, if any,
> was like - sadly, they committed nothing to writing nor did they leave us
> any recordings!
>
> One thing that IMO it is quite safe to say is that the image of cave-men
> communicating with monosyllabic guttural grunts at the level of "Me
Tarzan,
>   you Jane" type of sentence belongs fairly & squarely to the realm of
> fiction.
 absolutely.


 besides, "tarzan" isn't monosyllabic.  :)