SPEECH – A Natural History

Francisco Gaona, Author
Brook Nestor, Editor & Collaborator 

ibidem Verlag Press, Hanover, Germany
Columbia University Press (US distribution)

There is no fact in nature which does not carry the whole sense of nature. ~ Emerson

Order based on order ~ Erwin Schrödinger

The complexity of language and consequent difficulty in tracing its evolution was an immediate concern at the beginning of my endeavor. My approach was to study speech at its simplest manifestation, as the yet unelaborated invention of humankind in its infancy. First beginnings are simple, and my attempt an explanation that would suit the times and the subject matter: the invention of a new mode of vocalized acoustic information exchange. Such like vocalized exchange in the form of referential signal calls was already extant and the correspondence seemed fertile ground for investigation of a possible evolutionary transformation from signal cries to syllabic phonic utterances. In Isomerism and the isomeric reordering of acoustic frequency elements I discerned the likely solution to the evolution of speech.

My study offers a new approach to the evolution of speech as an isomeric acoustic reordering of the signal call elements of non-human animals and early hominins in their vocalized referential utterances. The calls were (and continue to be): vowel-like tonal harmonic frequencies (howls, wails, ululations; in marine mammals, dolphins’ tonal whistles and humpback whales’ sustained tonal melodic sequences); mixed harmonic and inharmonic frequencies (grunts and snarls); inharmonic consonant-like noise elements (sss, pfft, etc., and the sperm whales’ inharmonic preconsonantal clicks). The fact that vocalized signal calls were already uttered largely in protosyllabic form is a significant factor (caw-caw, woof-woof, tweet-tweet, yip-yip, etc.). In sum, the intermittent referential tones and noises of these proto-syllabic utterances were the preparatory sounds of the isomerically transformed, syllabically bonded vowels and consonants of human speech.

The isomeric principle states that when two physical phenomena share identical part elements in varied arrangement, a transformative reordering has been operative in the diversification. Prime examples are the hardest and softest minerals of the carbon group, diamond and graphite. My study extends the applicability of the isomeric principle to include acoustic frequency phenomena to account for the developmental transformation of vocalized referential signal utterances into syllabic phonological lexical entities. In the evolution of speech, it created an entirely new optimized means of information exchange: signal cries are asystematic, idiosyncratic utterances in circumscribed surroundings in structural and constructive contrast to the systematical multiplicity of lexical diversification by means of a primal generative formula: the universal systematic codification of all possible phenomena—the speech code.

For the evolution of speech, isomeric transformation was concurrently a functional reordering and a generative methodization. “In the structural economy of Nature, isomerism is not an exception, it is the rule…the isomeric difference in construction is enough…for an entirely different way of functioning.” (E. Schrödinger) This new way of functioning as the result of isomeric reordering became the distinguishing feature of speech. In contrast to the idiosyncratic acoustic frequency structure of individual signal calls, isomerism produced an ordered set in which each syllabic utterance was uniformly structured: the tonal segments (vowels and vowel equivalents) invariably occupied the wave crest, with the optional atonal and semitonal segments (consonants) appearing at the rising and descending margins of the wave. The stability of the set made its methodical reiteration possible, while the marginal segments provided the capacity for combinatory construction. Combinatory permutation and syllable-to-syllable addition characterize the generative systematic process of word construction.

I was concurrently drawn to the notion that cognitive anticipations of speech would provide the basis for its complex symbolic and syntagmatic elaboration. In this respect, I singled out the following:

  •  tracking: the recognition of signs and sign representation in the process of tracking and trailing
    in the hunt—a veritable early morphology of symbolic representation;
  • the Interval: the discovery of the sub-divisible Interval in the context of ritualized collective
    motion and vocalization as a method of configural design in choreography, scalar composition
    in music and intermittent syllabic vocalization in speech was a crucial anticipatory discovery
    contributing to the evolution of speech;
  • kinship: at the early stages of social organization, the reworking of the dual-kinship system of
    anthropoid apes and early hominins into a single kin-centered hierarchical structure of descent
    from a common ancestor involved a number of cognitive features precursive of speech:
    —graded categorization
    —a pre-abstractive conceptualization of unity and diversity of parts
    —the notions of present, past and future
    —as the archetype of syntagmatic order, the scheme of kin organization is a precursor of the syntax of speech.

The reconsideration and re-evaluation of the syllabic component of speech led me to the conclusion of its primacy as the first word and generative prototype of word construction.

Francisco Gaona