Foods from agricultural lifestyles may have made it easier to form some sounds

Other cultural and social factors, like adopting sounds from neighbors, also may have contributed to changes in language, the study’s authors said. Other linguists also point out that the study rests on untested assumptions, like just how much these small bite changes might influence sounds, the types of errors they could produce, the age at which hunter-gathers’ teeth wear down, and the notion that agriculture is a useful proxy for diet. Some linguists worry that if not handled with extreme care, subsequent studies of the physical or biological differences of language could invigorate ethnocentric beliefs that have plagued linguistics in the past, especially if research is publicly interpreted as making value judgments of different groups’ languages.

Source: www.nytimes.com