If language is a product of the human mind, it is also, as Studdert-Kennedy once wrote, "a mode of action". Words are put into play by movements of the human body. To fully appreciate the nature of spoken language, it is therefore necessary to ask whether, and in what ways, linguistic structure reflects the physical activity that yields fluently articulate vocalization. This is what Mac-Neilage and Davis have done in their report on page 527 of this issue. By analyzing the babbling sounds and first words of infants in an English-speaking environment (and subsequently in environments where other languages are spoken), they found four (possibly universal) sound patterns that suggest how the spoken forms of words originate.
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