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Edited by E. Anne Cutler, University of Western Sydney, Penrith South, New South Wales, Australia and approved December 24, 2014 (received for review September 9, 2014)
Significance
The sound systems of human languages are not generally thought to be ecologically adaptive. We offer the most extensive evidence to date that such systems are in fact adaptive and can be influenced, at least in some respects, by climatic factors. Based on a survey of laryngology data demonstrating the deleterious effects of aridity on vocal cord movement, we predict that complex tone patterns should be relatively unlikely to evolve in arid climates. This prediction is supported by careful statistical sampling of climatic and phonological data pertaining to over half of the world’s languages. We conclude that human sound systems, like those of some other species, are influenced by environmental variables.
Abstract
We summarize a number of findings in laryngology demonstrating that perturbations of phonation, including increased jitter and shimmer, are associated with desiccated ambient air. We predict that, given the relative imprecision of vocal fold vibration in desiccated versus humid contexts, arid and cold ecologies should be less amenable, when contrasted to warm and humid ecologies, to the development of languages with phonemic tone, especially complex tone. This prediction is supported by data from two large independently coded databases representing 3,700+ languages. Languages with complex tonality have generally not developed in very cold or otherwise desiccated climates, in accordance with the physiologically based predictions. The predicted global geographic–linguistic association is shown to operate within continents, within major language families, and across language isolates. Our results offer evidence that human sound systems are influenced by environmental factors.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: caleb{at}miami.edu.
Author contributions: C.E., D.E.B., and S.G.R. designed research; C.E., D.E.B., and S.G.R. performed research; C.E. formulated hypothesis; C.E., D.E.B., and S.G.R. analyzed data; and C.E., D.E.B., and S.G.R. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1417413112/-/DCSupplemental.
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