Biology matters: Variation in vocal tract anatomy and language
Résumé
There are about 7,000 or so languages currently used, and they vary in myriad ways at all their levels. We argue here that part of this cross-linguistic diversity might be explained by factors that are external to language itself, but which differ between groups of speakers and to which language adapts. In particular, we present evidence that there is widespread variation between individuals and groups in what concerns the anatomy of the vocal tract, variation that results in biases (that generate constraints and affordances) which may affect phonetics and phonology. We propose that factors such as the frequency of the biased speakers, their status and position in the communicative network of a speech community form a pool of standing variation which interacts in complex ways with the community's language and may result in the community-wide amplification of such biases. While more work is necessary, we suggest that these processes play a role in explaining the observed linguistic diversity.
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