reptiles
mammals
fish
birds
amphibians
apes
bears
cats
dogs
elephants
foxes
giraffes
Gorilla
Orangutan
Chimpanzee
Human
Biologically the
great apes are very
similar to one another.
human
orangutan
common ancestors of
humans and chimpanzees
lived 6-9 million years ago
chimpanzee
gorilla
In the history of life on
earth, chimpanzees are
our closest living animal
cousins.
What makes us
different to chimpanzees?
discuss
Why don’t chimps run
zoos full of humans?
Compared to chimps, humans:
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Walk upright
Have bigger brains
Have flat faces
Have little body hair
Live in larger social groups
Use many more tools
and …
Talk!
Chimp calls and human language
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•
fear
puzzlement
annoyance
food enjoyment
rage or distress
excitement
•
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hopes
desires
plans
problems
solutions
history
Big Questions about Speech
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How do we make speech sounds?
Why don’t other animals use speech?
What is speech used for?
How do we use speech to communicate?
How did speech evolve?
How does a child learn to speak?
Time for a simple
speech game
How many vowels?
Have a go
• In this game you need to think of as many
words of the form /b/ - vowel - /d/ as you can.
• That is: words that start with a /b/ sound, end
with a /d/ sound and only have a single vowel
sound in the middle.
• Here are some examples: bead, bid, bored.
• Don’t worry about the spelling: try and think of
the different vowel sounds that go between /b/
and /d/ to make different words.
• Who can find the most?
There are 17 English words b_d
bead
bard
bored
booed
bird
bid
bed
bad
bud
bod
bayed
buoyed
bide
bowed (a violin)
bowed (to a
queen)
beard
bared
English has about 20 different vowel sounds in total!
Five Voicebox Activities
1.
Look at how we make sounds in our “voicebox”
2.
Look at how the sounds made in our voicebox get
turned into vowels.
3.
Look at how we make different consonant sounds
4.
Compare speech sounds to animal sounds
5.
Compare modern human skulls with the skulls of
chimps and our fossil ancestors to look for
differences related to speech.
©
Credits
This PowerPoint was devised by Dr Mark Huckvale, Speech,
Hearing & Phonetic Sciences,
Division of Psychology & Language Sciences,
University College London
Images courtesy of istockphoto.com
and bigstockphoto.com
Design and layout: plumadesign.com