Scientists have always thought that one of the basic differences between us and our closest evolutionary cousins, chimpanzees, has been the ability to perceive and process speech. But that might not be the case.
Scientists now suspect that a "common ancestor" of chimps and humans evolved with the capacity for speech - and the human ability to perceive and process it might be more to do with being exposed to language when we are very young than any innate ability.
What separates us from the apes might just be practice.
New research with a 25-year-old chimp, Panzee, has shown that Panzee can "interpret" highly distorted speech sounds - in a way similar to humans.
Panzee can also interpret symbols, and can understand more than 100 spoken and digitised words - including a symbol for his own name.
Lisa Heimbauer, a researcher at Georgia State University's Language Research Centre, said: "I think our results just reinforce the fact that experience matters."
"Humans maybe do not perceive speech because they are human, but instead because of the tremendousamount of experience they have with it from birth."
Previously, the human brain has been thought to be uniquely evolved to perceive what is and isn't speech.




据英国《每日邮报》11月1日报道，科学家长期以来认为人类与人类的近亲--黑猩猩之间的基本区别之一是理解与加工语言的能力。但该观点也许并不属实。

科学家们目前怀疑黑猩猩和人类的共同祖先在进化时是拥有语言能
力的，而人类拥有理解和加工语言的能力或许是因为我们在很小的时候（在熟练运用许多先天技能之前）就更多的接触了语言。

语言实践或许是区分我们和黑猩猩语言能力的因素。

一项新研究观察了一只25岁名叫Panzee 的黑猩猩。研究显示出Panzee能理解高度失真的语音，这在某种程度上与人类相似。
Panzee还能理解符号和超过100个口语化和数字化的单词，包括表示它名字的符号。

乔治亚洲立大学语言研究中心的研究院研究员丽莎说："我想我们的研究结果仅仅补充论证了语言经验导致这一区别的事实。"

"或许人类能理解语言的原因不是因为他们是人，而是因为人类从一出生就接触了极其丰富的语言经验。"

在此之前，只有人类的大脑被认为进化到了可以识别语言的程度。

• ability [ə´biliti] n.(办事)能力；才干 (初中英语单词)
• perceive [pə´si:v] vt.察觉；看出；领悟 (初中英语单词)
• suspect [´sʌspekt, sə´spekt] v.怀疑；觉得 n.嫌疑犯 (初中英语单词)
• capacity [kə´pæsiti] n.容量；智能；能力 (初中英语单词)
• research [ri´sə:tʃ] n.&vi.调查；探究；研究 (初中英语单词)
• spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
• tremendous [tri´mendəs] a.可怕的；巨大的 (初中英语单词)
• amount [ə´maunt] n.总数；数量 v.合计 (初中英语单词)
• symbol [´simbəl] n.符号；象征 (高中英语单词)
• georgia [´dʒɔ:dʒjə] n.乔治亚 (高中英语单词)
• reinforce [,ri:in´fɔ:s] vt.增援 n.加固物 (高中英语单词)