Speech: A Natural History - Softcover

Francisco Gaona

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3838219244 ISBN 13: 9783838219240

Publisher: ibidem, 2024

Synopsis

Speech is the exchange of information for mutual social orientation. The fundamental features of speech are simplicity of elementary structure and universal referential application. Francisco Gaona traces the evolution of the signal calls of anthropoid apes and early hominids to the vocalized phonic utterances of speech by the isomeric reordering of the signal call’s frequency components. Determining the source of its vocalic and consonantal part elements and of the syllable as their integrational framework is essential to understanding the origin of speech. Vowels were first isolated during the ritualized practice of collective tonal vocalization as effectively consistent carriers of referential sound, with proto-consonantal oral noises excluded as interruptive noise. The syllabic wave emerges at the utterance of a vocal tonal element (a vowel or vowel equivalent). Rather than preceding, the syllable follows as a result of the sounding of the vowel. Subsequently, the previously excluded noises, together with the vowel elements, would be incorporated into the cohering acoustic wave-energy field of the syllable. The syllable as an ordered set of phonic elements is revealed as the fundamental combinatory and permutational structure generative of lexical items: the foundational basis of the development of speech. Gaona’s study pays special attention to: • the semiotic and cognitive importance of the ritual display performance, • in tracking, hominids first learned the significance and use of signs, an essential precursor of speech, • the regulated collective pace as the source of the sustaining rhythmical progression in the dance, music, and the prosody of speech, • the interval and intervallic subdivision of the collective pace as the origin of the choreography of movement, scalar melodic composition, and the prosodic intermittence of speech.

About this title

About the Authors

Francisco Gaona , BA in History, Arts & Letters (1953), Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Ph.D. in Philosophy (1964), Tübingen University, Tübingen, Germany. Previously Instructor of intensive beginning Spanish summer course at American Graduate School of International Studies (AIFT), Glendale, Arizona, USA (one summer course and one full semester). Sabbatical year in Bergamo, Italy (1975-76). He is Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Linguistics of the Department of Foreign Languages at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California, USA (1964-2004). Distinguished Professor Award 1977, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, USA. Publication: Basic Spanish (independent programmed learning adapted to computer use), published by Independent Learning Systems, San Rafael, California, in print 1971-1987

Brook Nestor, BA in Spanish and Linguistics (honors and distinction) (1975), taught Italian grammar and conversation in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages of Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, California, USA (1996-2005), and Italian grammar at Sonoma State University in the Department of Foreign Languages in Rohnert Park, California, USA. During 18 years in Bergamo, Italy, Nestor was a technical translator for an engineering firm in Bergamo and English instructor for doctors and engineers. Her book THE KITCHENARY: DICTIONARY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ITALIAN COOKING (awarded iUniverse Editor’s Choice and Reader’s Choice) was published by iUniverse in 2003. She has written numerous unpublished articles, including The Origin of Flavor and Under the Michelin Stars, as well as articles on Italian culture used for classroom instruction.

Edition details

• Publisher: ibidem
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3838219244
• ISBN 13: 9783838219240
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 506