From The Scientist, Mar 14, 2019:
Softer Diets Allowed Early Humans to Pronounce “F,” “V” Sounds
Drastic dietary changes during the agricultural revolution altered the configuration of the human bite, paving the way for new sounds in spoken language, a new study finds.
In 1985, the American linguist Charles Hockett proposed a radical idea during a lecture at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association: “f” and “v” sounds only became part of spoken language after the dawn of agriculture, and as such, were a “relatively recent innovation in human history.”...MUCH MORE
Hockett reasoned that softer, processed foods would lead to changes in the arrangement of the human bite, making the pronunciation of these sounds possible. This would explain why many hunter societies don’t tend to use “f” and “v” sounds in their languages. But the idea was sharply criticized, and Hockett himself soon gave up on it.
Now, more than 30 years later, an international team of researchers has taken another look at Hockett’s hypothesis, this time drawing on historical linguistics and paleoanthropology data as well as biomechanical simulations of sound production. The research, published today (March 14) in Science, suggests that labiodental sounds—so named because they require the involvement of the bottom lip and the upper teeth—likely emerged in recent millennia in parallel with diet-driven changes in the human bite configuration.
“Hockett’s paper was always just a curiosity to me, but now this is something I’ll talk about in class,” remarks Joe Salmons, a professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin who wasn’t involved in the study. “Whether they’re ultimately right or not, we can’t say for sure. But it’s a much more powerful case.”...
