This is the Voice, by John Colapinto
Nov. 13th, 2021 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boxofdelightsI enjoyed this account of John Colapinto's learning and thinking about the fascinating subject of the human voice. But science journalism is hard, and Colapinto is not a science journalist, so I did quibble with those areas where I had some previous knowledge.
Colapinto says that Chomsky is wrong that children learn to speak without being taught; he says that we do teach children to speak, by speaking to them in Motherese, and that "these prosodic exaggerations are adopted by parents in all cultures and languages and that every adult uses them when talking to babies (whether they are aware of it or not)." (p. 36) But the Tsimané, in Bolivia, do not use Motherese, and do not talk to small children much at all, and their children learn to speak by listening to fluent speakers talking to each other.
Especially when you're talking about sex, it's way too easy to oversimplify things you read and stitch them together to make a good story. Like, "With their evolved attraction to voices that are low (but not too low), women have dialed-up the average pitch of the male voice from that of our primate ancestors, even at the cost of a slightly weaker immune system in their offspring." (147) Earlier, Colapinto said that testosterone makes your immune system stronger. Here, he's talking about a study that says women prefer low male voices during the more-fertile part of their menstrual cycle, but not the rest of the time. Papers about female sexual preferences are way out on the hinky end of the reproducibility crisis to begin with, and once you mush that into "voices that are low (but not too low)", you're really not talking about science at all any more.
This week my library twin is reading The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch, and I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, by Claire Vaye Watkins.
Colapinto says that Chomsky is wrong that children learn to speak without being taught; he says that we do teach children to speak, by speaking to them in Motherese, and that "these prosodic exaggerations are adopted by parents in all cultures and languages and that every adult uses them when talking to babies (whether they are aware of it or not)." (p. 36) But the Tsimané, in Bolivia, do not use Motherese, and do not talk to small children much at all, and their children learn to speak by listening to fluent speakers talking to each other.
Especially when you're talking about sex, it's way too easy to oversimplify things you read and stitch them together to make a good story. Like, "With their evolved attraction to voices that are low (but not too low), women have dialed-up the average pitch of the male voice from that of our primate ancestors, even at the cost of a slightly weaker immune system in their offspring." (147) Earlier, Colapinto said that testosterone makes your immune system stronger. Here, he's talking about a study that says women prefer low male voices during the more-fertile part of their menstrual cycle, but not the rest of the time. Papers about female sexual preferences are way out on the hinky end of the reproducibility crisis to begin with, and once you mush that into "voices that are low (but not too low)", you're really not talking about science at all any more.
This week my library twin is reading The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch, and I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, by Claire Vaye Watkins.