The Origin of Speech and Hearing as the Basis of Human Verbal Expression

Kordovan, Filip. (2019). The Origin of Speech and Hearing as the Basis of Human Verbal Expression. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Chair of Anthropology
Department of Phonetics. [mentor Mildner, Vesna and Lauc, Tomislava].

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Abstract

Speech scientists have a real challenge to answer on a question of origin of speech. There are a lot of obstacles on a way that leads to the answer, and one of the biggest is that speech cannot be fossilized. However, certain conclusions can be made based on adaptive changes of peripheral anatomy and neuroanatomy, which are integral part of speech production. In addition, this question is further clarified with comparative studies on a living animal species and certain genetic findings. This thesis also includes a research work whose topic is hearing as basis of speech. Main goal of this research is to reveal existence of some differences in quality of speech of hearing impaired children when they speak spontaneously and when they speak during school assignments. To estimate the quality of speech, this research evaluated the articulation tempo (time) and pronunciation of vowels and some consonants. Results show that research participants have closer values of articulation tempo to the values of normal speech when they speak spontaneously, but conclusions of speech quality in different surroundings are hard to make on the basis of vowel formant frequencies, centre of gravity and standard deviation of consonants.

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