> increasing sounds’ number can understand the world
> better. In his Pygmalion, Higgins can distinguish
> one
> hundred and thirty vowel sounds, so he is smarter
> than
> Pickering. This technique enables Higgins to turn a
> flower gird into a princess magically. But do you
> ever
> think? If Higgins’ one hundred and thirty vowel
> sounds
> instead of promoting a flower girl, he uses it in
> the
> transmission of message? Isn’t it what we are
> looking
> forward to? Since a vowel has to be pronounced with
> a
> certain tone, you can’t separate them. It is just
> like
> that you cannot separate vowel with consonant. As
> every Mandarin speaker can distinguish four tones of
> every vowels, so we may say that every vowel for
> English speaker is four vowels for a Mandarin
> speaker.
> The 20 vowels of English are 80 vowels for Mandarin
> speaker, and the 35 Chinese vowels are 140 vowels
> for
> Mandarin speaker, 10 vowels more than Higgins’.
> Any way, I believe the strongest power of the human
> world is reason. Once you violated reason, people
> call
> you nonsense, and with nonsense, a strong army can
> turn to weaker, a richer person can turn to poorer.
> Some anthropologist believed between the species
> that
> could use language (human) and that couldn’t use
> language (animal), there were some species that
> could
> speak little language or speak a backward language.
> Later they found some evidence from the discovery of
> Neanderthal.
> From
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~tec/FitchWray.pdf
> “For the last thirty years, fossil analysis has been
> the dominant approach to the study of the evolution
> of
> speech. Paleoanthropologists have attempted to use
> the
> hominid fossil record to deduce the timing and order
> of speech-related adaptations such as the descent of
> the larynx and enlargement of cortical regions. This
> approach was initiated by the seminal observation by
> Lieberman et al. (1969) that the human vocal tract
> differs from that in other primates, in having a
> lowered larynx (Figure 1), a configuration that
> allows
> humans to make a wider variety of vowels that other
> primate species. Soon afterward, Lieberman and
> Crelin
> (1971) used a reconstruction of the Neanderthal soft
> tissue vocal tract, based on basicranial anatomy and
> some comparative data, to infer that larynx position
> in Neanderthals was closer to that of other primates
> than of modern humans. This suggested that
> Neanderthals could not make certain speech sounds
> that
> are typical of modern human languages. Although
> those
> authors never claimed that Neanderthals lacked
> language entirely, the paper spurred a vigorous (and
> still ongoing) debate about the speech and language
> capacities of Neanderthals, and extinct hominids in
> general (Falk 1975, DuBrul 1976, Arensburg et al.
> 1989, 1990). A review of this literature makes clear
> that there is still no general agreement about when
> articulate speech came to play the crucial role that
> it subserves in modern human language. This is not
> surprising, because the vocal tract is largely made
> up
> of soft tissue that does not fossilize, and thus
> there
> are no obvious skeletal indicators that would
> provide
> unambiguous evidence for speech. Thus, despite many
> years of hard work, new fossils, and creative new
> approaches to analysis, the currently available
> fossil
> data are inconclusive.”
>
> In
http://zolatimes.com/V2.41/dognose.html, there is
> an interesting supposition:
> “About 100,000 years ago we all were wandering over
> the face of the earth, nibbling here and there. Some
> of us, members of Homo Erectus, evolved with a
> smaller, flatter face, but essentially our brain
> size
> was the same as our Neanderthal cousins. Although we
> differed in mild respects physically, both types of
> humans behaved similarly. We buried our dead, used
> fire and tools, cared for the old ones and raised
> kids. We hunted and gathered together on the planet
> and lived side by side from 120,000 years ago till
> about 30,000 years past. Then came a crucial moment
> in
> our evolution. Homo Sapiens survived and the
> Neanderthal did not. This fact is rather curious
> since
> they were bigger and stronger than us, with huge
> noses
> and large muscles. It would seem that they had an
> advantage to ensure their survival over us. So why
> did
> we survive and they didn’t?
> The Homo Sapiens, having a smaller flatter face with
> a
> narrower nose subsequently lost the accurate sense
> of
> smell that had allowed us to smell danger. Our
> olfactory bulb (nerve for smell) is the smallest
> among
> all human species, and when it went, about 14,000
> years ago, we were ready to gain speech. This was
> due
> to the fact that we could now lift our lighter heads
> upward and forward giving us an advantage in seeing
> our prey, and free up the voice box to reverberate
> sounds. - -
> Life in and around the camp adjusted to the
> presence
> of the wolf. But an added boon became apparent very
> quickly. Since the sense of smell in humans had
> reduced their ability to detect oncoming prey, the
> noisy wolves sounded the alert when danger was
> immanent, because they could smell for miles. This
> interdependence was a cozy situation for both. Each
> understood the other in an easy symbiosis. For the
> wolf this was a good deal and they knew it. They
> chose
> us and in time man's best friend was the result.
> Despite our thinking that our favorite Benji
> understands the words we use, he still only
> recognizes
> the gestures, movements and the tonal sound of
> emotion, as any one who yells at a dog will know.
> They
> refuse to cooperate with irrational humans.”
> From the standpoint of empiricism, some one
> criticise
> that this conclusion is not true. They believe that
> the soft tissue of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal are
> no
> different. At least, no body have every seen it. But
> from rationalism thinking, it is convincible. It is
> the principle of evolutionist. Or we may say no
> matter
> it is true or not, there should be some species
> between able and unable to use language. If it were
> not the Neanderthal, it would be some species else,
> which have not been discovered yet.
> I am always wondering wether the computer will be
> the
> next helper of human being? It is just like the dog
> (wolf) to Homo Sapiens, by their help we lost some
> of
> our abilities, but on the other hand we developed
> some
> sense. Yet maybe more carefully decoding information
> that carried by sounds could be one of them also. Or
> in one word, we lose or save some of the visual
> ability but for an exchange, we gain a more
> sensitive
> auditory ability. The current human beings of the
> world has found no different of speak-listen organ
> among different races. Chao Yuan Ren had taught
> Chinese language in America for several decades, yet
> he found that only one student couldn’t utter the
> tone
> properly. It did not to say that he was unable to
> use
> the tones. For when Chao taught him the first tone
> of
> Mandarin, he always repeating in second tone, and
> when
> taught him the third tone of mandarin, he always
> repeating in fourth tone. I thought that it does not
> originate from articulate organ but by tradition.
> The
> best example is that when we teach children
> alphabetic
> letters, we set all the 26 letters to music, in
> order
> to help them to remember.
> Currently, the articulate and auditory organ of
> all
> humankind is exactly the same, but no one dare say
> that after long period evolution, with different
> languages, they will still be the same.
> The power of military can beat a country, the
> power
> of economy can weaken a country, but the power of
> reason can cause geno-sui-cide.
>
>