ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, TETIANA LAZUNOVA
In 1985, the American linguist Charles Hockett proposed a radical idea during a lecture at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association: “f” and “v” sounds only became part of spoken language after the dawn of agriculture, and as such, were a “relatively recent innovation in human history.”
Hockett reasoned that softer, processed foods would lead to changes in the arrangement of the human bite, making the pronunciation of these sounds possible. This would explain why many hunter societies don’t tend to use “f” and “v” sounds in their languages. But the idea was sharply criticized, and Hockett himself soon gave up on it.
Now, more than 30 years later, an international team of researchers has taken another look at Hockett’s hypothesis, this time drawing on historical linguistics and paleoanthropology data as well as biomechanical simulations of sound production. The research, published today (March ...
