A syllable-centric framework for the evolution of spoken language

Abstract

The cyclic nature of speech production, as manifested in the syllabic organization of spoken language, is likely to reflect general properties of sensori-motor integration rather than merely a phylogenetic progression from mastication, teeth chattering, and lipsmacks. The temporal properties of spontaneous speech reflect the entropy of its underlying constituents and are optimized for rapid transmission and decoding of linguistic information conveyed by a complex constellation of acoustic and visual cues, suggesting that the dawn of human language may have occurred when the articulatory cycle was efficiently yoked to the temporal dynamics of sensory coding and rapid retrieval from referential memory.