stylistic:style_transfer, linguistic:translation
Language

In 1971, cognitive scientist Philip Lieberman attempted to reconstruct the Neanderthal vocal tract and concluded that it was similar to that of a newborn and incapable of producing a large range of speech sounds, due to the large size of the mouth and the small size of the pharyngeal cavity (according to his reconstruction), thus no need for a descended larynx to fit the entire tongue inside the mouth. He claimed that they were anatomically unable to produce the sounds /a/, /i/, /u/, /ɔ/, /g/, and /k/ and thus lacked the capacity for articulate speech, though were still able to speak at a level higher than non-human primates. However, the lack of a descended larynx does not necessarily equate to a reduced vowel capacity. The 1983 discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone —used in speech production in humans—in Kebara 2 which is almost identical to that of humans suggests Neanderthals were capable of speech. Also, the ancestral Sima de los Huesos hominins had humanlike hyoid and ear bones, which could suggest the early evolution of the modern human vocal apparatus. However, the hyoid does not definitively provide insight into vocal tract anatomy. Subsequent studies reconstruct the Neanderthal vocal apparatus as comparable to that of modern humans, with a similar vocal repertoire. In 2015, Lieberman hypothesized that Neanderthals were capable of syntactical language, although nonetheless incapable of mastering any human dialect.