The sounds of language are certainly intimately related to the morphology of the vocal tract.

语言中的声音的确和声道的形态学密切相关。

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But we can see what the human vocal tract shape has allowed us to do that our primate relatives can't.

但是，我们可以从中看出人类声道形状允许我们做的事，我们的灵长类亲戚的确做不到。

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Fossils can only tell us so much about the shape of the vocal tract because much of it is soft tissue.

因为发音系统大部分是软组织，无缘变成化石，现存的化石也只能告诉我们一点呼吸道的形状。

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Since the vocal tract consists of soft tissue (and therefore does not fossilise), reconstructing it depends on extrapolating from measurements made at the bases of fossil skulls.

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There is also the "vocal tract" - everything upwards of the larynx along with the mouth, which are well known in humans to shape sung notes and subtle vowel sounds.

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But David Frayer and Chris Nicolay at the University of Kansas have, over the past couple of years, shown that it is at least equally plausible that Neanderthals possessed a vocal tract similar to a modern adult's.

ECONOMIST: What is music for?