We eat through the same hole we speak out of. Without changing that, there isn't any way to get the lungs to supply the speaking apparatuses with air unless we cross tubes somewhere.
Dolphins!. They talk out of their noses. And fairly well. Throw some kind of tongue-thingy in there and viola.
Here's a fairly interesting article that says:
quote:
its pitch is not defined by the size of its nasal air cavities, and hence that it is not whistling," Madsen said. "Rather, it makes sound by making connective tissue in the nose vibrate at the frequency it wishes to produce by adjusting the muscular tension and air flow over the tissue."
"That is the same way that we humans make sound with our vocal cords to speak," he added.
It was just a general point that it is rather common for creatures to have separate breathing and eating tubes.
Are you talking about mammals? Because its totally irrelevant that frogs breath through their skin, or bugs through their legs, or whatever the hell it is you're talking about.
The only mammals that I can think of right now that have that is the cetacae. And they all can talk pretty good from an animal perspective. The dolphins are just the poster child for cetacae and that's why they were used. If your response is that other createures, that aren't even mammals, can breath through a non-eating tube, then you've horribly missed the point, which is what I suspect is the case given you're avoidance of clarifying.
It seems that to 'wind up' the system would take as much energy as the system would give off (probably more).
You could incorporate some leverage to help for heavier functions.
I think the advantages really come from the gear's ability to store a large amount of energy and release it rapidly in a higher concentration.
I still think it could help with some, albeit slow, heavy lifting.