phonology and morphology

[souna]

1- while the estimated number of the world languages are 5000 to 8000,the estimated number of sounds are 200 to 300,why?2-were the organs of speech primarily

[Anglika]

What are your questions?

[souna]

i have two quetions and i wrote them above

[Anglika]

Originally Posted by souna

1- while the estimated number of the world languages is 5000 to 8000,the estimated number of sounds is 200 to 300,why?

Can there ever be an answer to why are there only 200-300 sounds? Presumably there must be some element of relationship of the structure of the human larynx and breathing systems to the way in which sounds are produced, and there is a limit to that.

Air and Phonation
Organs

2-were the organs of speech primarily Were the organs of speech primarily what? This does not make sense. Perhaps you mean "Where are the organs of speech?"

Organs of Speech

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[Soup]

1- While the estimated number of the world languages are 5000 to 8000, the estimated number of sounds are 200 to 300, why?
=> Humans differ in culture but share the same articulatory apparatus; e.g., lips, teeth, tongue, nose, vocal folds, lungs. The articulators are fixed in number, which means that sound can be generated and manipulated in only so many ways.


2- Were the organs of speech primarily...
=> That sentence is incomplete.

[souna]

hi my friends,i'm sorry because i wrote incomplete question and for that i'll repeat it and that it is:were the organs of speech primarily

[Anglika]

Souna, it is still incomplete: "Were the organs of speech primarily ?????????".

Can you ask the question in another way?

[souna]

hi again,i'm so sorry if i write incopmlete question ,in fact it's not my mistake because i noticed that i write a complete question but when i returned to see it how it has written i find it has written incomplete any way,my question is:were the organs of speech primarily designed for speech purposes?

[BobK]

Originally Posted by souna

...were the organs of speech primarily designed for speech purposes?

What a strange question! It assumes that they were designed at all, and a discussion about that doesn't belong in this forum.

Most of the organs of speech have analogues in other mammals. What they (other mammals) lack is partly the mental organization (though there is much we don't know about nearly all animal communication, and primates can be taught to use a few hundred 'words' in an intelligent way), partly the musculature (if an animal doesn't have the need to talk, it has no need of and doesn't develop the necessary muscles in the vocal tract), and partly a physiological difference the details of which escape me - something that prevents even other primates from articulating in any substantial way 'like' a human being: perhaps someone can help me out here...?

Read more here: Linguistic universal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

b

[Soup]

Originally Posted by souna

Were the organs of speech primarily designed for speech purposes?

Gracefully and widely side-stepping the semantics of designed, the answer to your question is in the definition of the word speech. If "speech" means communication used by humans, then no, the lips, teeth, tongue, nose, vocal folds, lungs, and related organs of speech had other functional purposes originally; e.g., chewing food, sense of smell, breathing. Humans are by nature animals; our anatomy is a product of our environment. Our langauge--well, "speech" stems from and is a matter of culture. It's an after-the-fact evolutionary trait.