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[Sci.News] Post-Neolithic Diet-Induced Dental Changes Led to Introduction of ‘F’ and ‘V’ Sounds

Post-Neolithic Diet-Induced Dental Changes Led to Introduction of ‘F’ and ‘V’ Sounds | Sci.News

https://www.sci.news/othersciences/linguistics/diet-labiodentals-07001.html

A class of speech sounds that is now present in nearly half of the world’s languages -- labiodentals, produced by positioning the lower lip against the upper teeth, such as in ‘f’ or ‘v’ -- are a relatively recent development, one brought about by post-Neolithic diet-induced changes in the human bite. That’s according to a paper published in the March 15, 2019 issue of the journal Science.

Post-Neolithic Diet-Induced Dental Changes Led to Introduction of ‘F’ and ‘V’ Sounds | Sci.News

Link for the Science research article. The observation that societies without access to softer food kind of avoided labiodentals is old, from 1985, but the research is recent-ish (2019).

2 comments

digehode

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My favourite bit of this is the comment at the bottom of the page that just says "doubt it". So glad scientific discourse is alive and well.

lvxferre

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I'm glad, too. This sort of scepticism is one of the pillars of science. Like, just because it seems solid (it does, for me) it doesn't mean that it's true.

A factor not mentioned by either the research nor the article is that [f v] sound considerably sharper than [ɸ β], so there are contrastive reasons to shift the fricatives from bilabial to labiodental if the effort necessary doesn't make them too convoluted to pronounce.