Bioacoustics of human whistled languages: an alternative approach to the cognitive processes of language

Meyer, Julien

doi:10.1590/s0001-37652004000200033

Cited by 18 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The possibility of syncopating the sound must have offered great rhythmic possibilities. The aerophone produced a sound with an intensity of between 85 and 90 dB, which might be audible from a distance of 100-200 m. This is a lower intensity than the sound that can be produced by a person whistling with just fingers and lips, which can reach a level of 130 dB at a distance of 1 m, and be audible as far as 10 km away (Meyer 2004). This makes it unlikely that the purpose of the Davant Pau aerophone was to communicate over distance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Use and Sonority of a 23,000-Year-Old Bone Aerophone from Davant Pau Cave (NE of the Iberian Peninsula)

Ibáñez¹,

Salius²,

Clemente‐Conte³

et al. 2015

Current Anthropology

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The production of sound is a significant human capacity that is used, through the generation of feelings and emotions, for conditioning social and biological reproduction. Despite this elevance and although several hundred instruments have been attributed to the production of sound along the Upper Paleolithic, our knowledge of how and in what contexts music was played during this period is still quite limited. In this paper, the aerophone found in the Davant Pau excavation, in the northeast part of the Iberian Peninsula, dated to 23,000 years cal BP, is studied to infer, through experimentation and microwear analysis, how it was made and used. It is a whistletype instrument that would have allowed the production of an almost monotonic sound, which could be acutely syncopated, generating a fast rhythm. This is a type of sound most probably used in collective ceremonies in which the coordination of the participants was important, as observed in several ethnographic studies of hunter-gatherer groups.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Use and Sonority of a 23,000-Year-Old Bone Aerophone from Davant Pau Cave (NE of the Iberian Peninsula)

Ibáñez¹,

Salius²,

Clemente‐Conte³

et al. 2015

Current Anthropology

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“…The effect is to approximate spoken Spanish, with the whistled frequency standing in for the second formant (F2) of Spanish vowels [6,7]. Similar whistled proxies have been described for French [45], Turkish [46] and Greek [47], among other languages [2,6]. Though the simpler acoustical structure of whistling encodes less information than the voice, even amateur whistlers are highly precise [48].…”

Section: (A) a Shared Bioacoustical Mechanism With Speechmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…These sounds travel well over large distances [1] and are easy to discern from other biological sounds by the rare occurrence of pure-tone sine waves in nature. These features have made whistling a viable alternative sound source for human communication when signal fidelity may be more important than signal complexity [2,3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whistled languages encode less information from which to identify the intended speech sounds than voiced speech, but are more robust to long-distance communication. The narrow frequency band of the whistle gives it more power per unit of spectral bandwidth, increasing its signal-to-noise ratio and the effective range of communication [1][2][3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Whistling shares a common tongue with speech: bioacoustics from real-time MRI of the human vocal tract

et al. 2019

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Most human communication is carried by modulations of the voice. However, a wide range of cultures has developed alternative forms of communication that make use of a whistled sound source. For example, whistling is used as a highly salient signal for capturing attention, and can have iconic cultural meanings such as the catcall, enact a formal code as in boatswain's calls or stand as a proxy for speech in whistled languages. We used real-time magnetic resonance imaging to examine the muscular control of whistling to describe a strong association between the shape of the tongue and the whistled frequency. This bioacoustic profile parallels the use of the tongue in vowel production. This is consistent with the role of whistled languages as proxies for spoken languages, in which one of the acoustical features of speech sounds is substituted with a frequency-modulated whistle. Furthermore, previous evidence that non-human apes may be capable of learning to whistle from humans suggests that these animals may have similar sensorimotor abilities to those that are used to support speech in humans.

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“…The distance between sound source and perceiver is also important for the intelligibility of the acoustic features of speech (Allen, Alais, and Carlile 2009). Cultural adaptations to ecological and social milieus where distance can affect speech intelligibility include the use of sound tools as surrogate speech systems (e.g., Kaminski 2008;Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok 1976) and variations in speech styles (e.g., Meyer 2004Meyer , 2008 to facilitate communication.…”

Section: Ethological Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Acoustic and Auditory Contexts of Human Behavior

Blake¹,

Cross²

2015

Current Anthropology

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Sound is a crucial component of the human communicative toolkit; however, as a topic of research, it has been relatively neglected in archaeological method and theory. We propose that a framework requires to be developed in which inferences can be made about the significance of sound in the past that are not bounded by the particularities of current cultural contexts. Such a framework should be multidisciplinary and draw on what is known scientifically about human sensitivities to and uses of sound, including nonverbal vocalizations, speech and music, ethological studies that offer insight into how sound perception and environment affect sociality and survival, and the effects of environment on socially significant human sound. Human sociality involves complex and dynamic relationships with sound. Not only does sound provide information about the environments in which people live (Truax 1999), but its construction, perception, and socially ascribed meanings influence how people interact with each other (Cross and Woodruff 2009). Both intentional and unintentional sounds affect how people engage with, transform, and create environments or places. This is true for communicating through spoken language, dancing, music-making, and signaling, in addition to the everyday sounds of preparing and eating food, creating tools, and moving through spaces. The social values that are ascribed to sound involve intricate and diverse worldviews that are integral to modern-day societies (Atkinson 2007) and were undoubtedly significant in prehistoric and evolutionary time frames (

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Bioacoustics of human whistled languages: an alternative approach to the cognitive processes of language

Cited by 18 publications

References 13 publications

Use and Sonority of a 23,000-Year-Old Bone Aerophone from Davant Pau Cave (NE of the Iberian Peninsula)

Use and Sonority of a 23,000-Year-Old Bone Aerophone from Davant Pau Cave (NE of the Iberian Peninsula)

Whistling shares a common tongue with speech: bioacoustics from real-time MRI of the human vocal tract

The Acoustic and Auditory Contexts of Human Behavior

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