A comparative approach to the nonhuman primate vocal tract: Implications for sound production.
Miguel A. Schön Ybarra · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1992
This talk aims at elucidating the sound-producing capabilities inherent to the nonhuman primate vocal tract morphology. Focus is on tract features which, on the bases of their respective form, structure, and location, can be regarded as (1) capable of contributing to generate a voiced/unvoiced source function, or (2) to transiently modify the transfer function of the tract. Relevant qualitative data, and, whenever accessible, also quantitative, were obtained from current references, and in the laboratory of the speaker where morphology-to-performance relationships are being studied in the vocal tract of the rhesus macaque and some New World monkeys. Comparative considerations suggest that the vocal tract of nonhuman primates can produce a variety of sounds and sound contrasts common to all nonhuman primates, but, also, that some of the taxa can make certain sounds and sound contrasts which others cannot.