Neuchâtel32 speakers used different tongue movements to produce identical vowels.
The authors propose such variation could seed differences among the world’s 7,000 or so languages.
A PLOS Biology study ran real-time magnetic resonance imaging on 16 men and 16 women saying 5 American English vowels.
The authors caution the sample was small and compared only a few language families.
They offer the variation as a baseline for testing which social or historical factors drove language diversification.
How each outlet framed it
- Phys.org
- credits Steven Moran and Tiena Danner's PLOS Biology study with showing different vocal tracts produce the same vowels
Sources: Phys.org