OUR ability to speak has more to do with our feet than our brains. If we
didn鈥檛 walk upright, we couldn鈥檛 control out breathing flexibly enough to make
the complex sounds necessary for speech, a biologist argues.
Nearly four years ago, Robert Provine of the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County, compared the way we laugh with the way chimps laugh and
noticed something interesting. While people break a single breath into a
chopped-up 鈥渉a, ha, ha鈥�, chimps have to take a separate breath for each 鈥渉a鈥�
(快猫短视频, 20 January 1996, p 5).
This convinced him that the reason human beings can talk while other animals
can鈥檛 might have something to do with breathing鈥攁 factor that he says has
been largely overlooked in the study of language. 鈥淟inguistics is a science that
appears from the neck up, and we鈥檙e talking about something that occurs from the
neck down.鈥�
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Animals that walk on four legs tend to take a breath with each stride, he
says. People, on the other hand, can take a few strides per breath鈥攐r a
few breaths per stride鈥攁s they like. 鈥淗umans have much more freedom,鈥�
Provine says. 鈥淭hat freedom was bought with bipedality.鈥�
There may also be certain neurological reasons why other animals can鈥檛 speak,
Provine admits. But even without these, he says, their breathing would simply be
too inflexible for speech.
