ABSTRACT
Phonetics is the study of the nature of speech. In the past few years, there has been increasing interest in the most fundamental question regarding the nature of speech: the question of how it evolved. Recent work in this area can be found in a series of three volumes based on biennial international conferences on the evolution of language (Hurford, Studdert-Kennedy, & Knight, 1998; Knight & Hurford, 2000; Wray, 2002). The most comprehensive present view of the evolution of speech production is contained in the Frame and Content theory (e.g., MacNeilage, 1998; MacNeilage & Davis, 1990; MacNeilage & Davis, 2000; MacNeilage, Studdert-Kennedy, & Lindblom, 1985). This theory involves an attempt to integrate evidence from speech phylogeny, speech ontogeny, and the neurobiology of speech. In this chapter we summarize phylogenetic and ontogenetic aspects of this theory and focus on evidence from neuropathology that is crucial to a central tenet of the theory, namely that a cognitive–motor syllable frame has evolved as part of the interface between cognitive and motor levels of speech production.
