PRELIMINARY RESULT OF THE « ORIGINS OF SPEECH » PROJECT
Amélie Vialet  1, *@  , Dominique Grimaud-Hervé  1@  , Marouane El Mouss  2  , Yohan Payan  3@  , Pascal Perrier  4@  , Louis-Jean Boé  5  , Anca Belme  6  , Florent Goussard  7@  , Réda Attia  8  , Dominique Gommery  9@  , Anick Abourachid  10@  , Frédéric Marin  11@  , Delphine Brabant  12  , Frédéric Hecht  13@  , Adrien Meguerditchian  14@  , François Cornelis  15@  
1 : Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle – UMR 7194 – UPVD, Paris, France
UMR7194, UMR 7194
2 : ISCD, Sorbonne Université, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris, France
ISCD
3 : TIMC-IMAG
CNRS : UMR5525
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, TIMC-IMAG, F-38000 Grenoble -  France
4 : Grenoble Image Parole Signal Communication  (GIPSA-lab)
CNRS : UMR5216
11 rue des Mathématiques, 38100 Saint Martin d'Hères -  France
5 : GIPSA-lab, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP, Grenoble, France
GIPSA-lab CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP
6 : Sorbonne Université, CNRS, UMR 7190, Institut Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Paris, France
UMR 7190
7 : Centre de recherche en Paléontologie - Paris (UMR7207 CR2P)
MNHN-CNRS-SU
8 : Sorbonne Université, UPMC Univ. Paris 06, master science pour l'ingénieur, ISCD, Paris, France
ISCD
9 : Centre de Recherche sur la Paléobiodiversité et les Paléoenvironnements  (CR2P)
MNHN-UPMC-CNRS, Sorbonne Universités, CNRS : UMR7207
Université Pierre et Marie T.46-56, E.5, case 104, 4 Place Jussieu, 75252 Paris cedex 05 -  France
10 : UMR 7179 Mecadev
Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle - MNHN (FRANCE)
11 : Sorbonne Unversités, Université de technologie de Compiégne ,Biomécanique et Bioingénierie UMR CNRS 7338
Université de Technologie de Compiègne : UMRCNRS 7338
12 : Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Plateforme Surfaçus, Délégation à l'innovation numérique, Direction générale déléguée aux collections, MNHN, Paris
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN)
13 : Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions  (LJLL)  -  Website
Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6, Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UMR7598
Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Boîte courrier 187 - 75252 Paris Cedex 05 -  France
14 : Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (LPC) UMR7290, CNRS/Aix-Marseille Univ, Institut of Language, Communication and the Brain (ILCB) & Station de Primatologie CNRS UAR846
CNRS : UMR7290
15 : Sorbonne Université, Département de Radiologie Interventionnelle, Hôpital Tenon, Paris, France
Groupe hospitalier Pellegrin, CHU Bordeaux
* : Corresponding author

The speech abilities of fossil hominins are one of the oldest and most challenging questions in palaeoanthropology. The theory of « laryngeal descent » has long been used to explain human singularity. However, recent work has shown that some non-human primates were « speech ready ». The organs and soft tissues of the vocal apparatus are not preserved in the fossil record.

This is why, to understand human-like speech capacity, we have developed a project untitled « Origins of speech », mainly supported by the institute of computing and data sciences (ISCD) of Sorbonne University, based on the bony articulators of speech. It aims at inferring soft tissue of the vocal tract (mainly the tongue and the pharyngeal walls) in fossil hominins based on the bony structure of the head, using transformation models from soft tissues (recorded with MR imaging) and bony structure (CT scans) of a living Homo Sapiens. These transformation models are evaluated and validated on data recorded from non-human primates, in which both soft tissues and bony structure are preserved.

This multidisciplinary research involves palaeoanthropologists, biomechanicians, specialists in speech sciences, mathematical modeling and mathematicians. We present the preliminary results of this work, which aims at generating a Finite Element tongue model of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neanderthal specimen by transforming an existing model of a modern Homo sapiens using 3D image registration. Then we expect to quantify the parametric uncertainties resulted from the tongue model generation by a non-intrusive approach.

Moreover, we are seeking to test the consequence of a vertical posture on human elocution faculty. We focused on an anatomical study (2D-3D) to test the relationships between bone structures within primates using a series of skeletons from the collections of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle to understand the geometry of the vocal apparatus (bone substrate) within the cranial complex and regarding the cervical spine (head position), and to carry out comparisons between genus (Homo/Pan/Gorilla/Papio) and species (Homo sapiens/Neanderthals).



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