Humans Use Mostly Consonants To Identify Words — Humph!
A recent study indicates humans use mostly consonant sounds to identify words within the flow of speech.
The study by researchers at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, indicates speech elicits a series of representations, such as syllables, vowels, or consonants, which our brains identify as such from the very early onset of language acquisition.
The researchers said consonants serve mainly to distinguish among words, whereas vowels tend to carry grammatical information.
“Other scientists conjectured it could be possible to learn a language simply using the incredible statistical capacities of the brain,” said Luca Bonatti, one of the researchers. “Instead, in our work, we studied which computational limits language imposes to this system for statistical calculus.”
discovered by E. Campbell
Another non-surprise 😉
Just look at all those Iraqui and East-european names with no vowels… 🙂
Actually the first alphabet (by Semites in what is now northeastern Egypt) used only consonants – and the Hebrew and Arabic alphabets which were derived from it still tend to omit the vowels more often than they use them.
The study may be true for Italian. Let’s see it again with Hawaiian.