The motor core of speech: a comparison of serial organization patterns in infants and languages.
Comparison of serial organization of infant babbling and early speech with that of 10 languages reveals four movement-related design features reflecting a deep evolutionary heritage: (1) the cyclical consonant-vowel alternation underlying the syllable, a "Frame" for speech consisting of mandibular oscillation, possibly evolving from ingestive cyclicities (e.g., chewing) via visuofacial communicative cyclicities (e.g., lipsmacks); (2) three intracyclical consonant-vowel co-occurrence preferences reflecting basic biomechanical constraints-coronal consonants-front vowels, dorsal consonants-back vowels, and labial consonants-central vowels; (3) a developmental progression from above-chance to below-chance levels of intercyclical consonant repetition; (4) an ease-related labial consonant-vowel-coronal consonant sequence preference for word initiation. These design features presumably result from self-organizational responses to selection pressures, primarily determined by motor factors. No explanation for these design features is available from Universal Grammar, and, except for feature 3, perceptual-motor learning seems to have only a limited causal role in acquisition of any design feature.
MacNeilage
P F
PF
Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, 78712, USA. macneilage@mail.utexas.edu
Davis
B L
BL
Kinney
A
A
Matyear
C L
CL
D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*