Modelling sociophonetic variation

Jannedy, Stefanie; Hay, Jennifer

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2006.08.001

Cited by 54 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…variation and more "breathy" voices, for example (25,26). Additional experiments would be required to explore the acoustic characteristics involved, but on the basis of our results it seems that elephants do not appear to base their sex distinction solely on the cues most commonly used by humans to distinguish between the voices of the sexes.…”

Section: Resynthesized Maasai Female (E and F) And Maasi Male Vs Mamentioning

confidence: 76%

Elephants can determine ethnicity, gender, and age from acoustic cues in human voices

McComb

Shannon

Sayialel

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

112

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Animals can accrue direct fitness benefits by accurately classifying predatory threat according to the species of predator and the magnitude of risk associated with an encounter. Human predators present a particularly interesting cognitive challenge, as it is typically the case that different human subgroups pose radically different levels of danger to animals living around them. Although a number of prey species have proved able to discriminate between certain human categories on the basis of visual and olfactory cues, vocalizations potentially provide a much richer source of information. We now use controlled playback experiments to investigate whether family groups of free-ranging African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Amboseli National Park, Kenya can use acoustic characteristics of speech to make functionally relevant distinctions between human subcategories differing not only in ethnicity but also in sex and age. Our results demonstrate that elephants can reliably discriminate between two different ethnic groups that differ in the level of threat they represent, significantly increasing their probability of defensive bunching and investigative smelling following playbacks of Maasai voices. Moreover, these responses were specific to the sex and age of Maasai presented, with the voices of Maasai women and boys, subcategories that would generally pose little threat, significantly less likely to produce these behavioral responses. Considering the long history and often pervasive predatory threat associated with humans across the globe, it is likely that abilities to precisely identify dangerous subcategories of humans on the basis of subtle voice characteristics could have been selected for in other cognitively advanced animal species.T he ability to recognize predators and assess the level of threat that they pose is a crucial cognitive skill for many wild animals that has very direct and obvious fitness consequences (1-5). Until recently, most research in this area focused on how a range of birds and mammals classify other animal predators, demonstrating complex abilities to differentiate between predators with different hunting styles and respond with appropriate escape tactics (2, 3, 6-8). However, for many wild populations, humans represent a significant predatory threat (5, 9, 10) and this threat is rapidly increasing as areas for wildlife decrease and humananimal conflict grows. Moreover, as it is typically the case that not all humans pose the same risk to prey species, distinguishing between different human subgroups to identify those associated with genuinely threatening situations could present a major cognitive challenge. The extent of behavioral flexibility that different species may exhibit in correctly classifying human predators-and the degree of sophistication possible in such abilities-is therefore of considerable interest.Most research on the abilities of animals to classify human predators has focused on discrimination through facial features or general differences in behavior and appear...

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Section: Resynthesized Maasai Female (E and F) And Maasi Male Vs Mamentioning

confidence: 76%

Elephants can determine ethnicity, gender, and age from acoustic cues in human voices

McComb

Shannon

Sayialel

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

112

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“…Beyond such studies on social perceptions, there has also been some work investigating the perception of linguistic form, with most of these suggesting that social differences across listeners and/or speakers influence the way they perceive stimuli of varying kinds (e.g. Pisoni, 2004, 2007;Di Paolo and Faber, 1990;Foulkes and Docherty, 2006;Graff et al, 1986;Hay et al, 2006;Jannedy and Hay, 2006;Janson, 1986;Koops et al, 2008;Labov and Ash, 1997;Niedzielski, 1999;Plichta and Preston, 2005;Purnell et al, 1999;Strand, 1999;Strand and Johnson, 1996;Willis, 1972;Wolfram et al, 1999). Foundational work by Johnson et al (1999), Strand (1999) and Strand and Johnson (1996) showed that the perception of both fricative and vowel continua were affected by perceived speaker gender.…”

Section: Background On Regional Differences In Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the relationship between production and perception in the mid front vowels of U.S. English

Fridland

Kendall

2012

Lingua

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“…The model outlined below is informed by three broad findings concerning the nature of linguistic categories. First, linguistic categories appear to contain a great deal of phonetic detail (Pierrehumbert 2002, Jannedy & Hay 2006, Baayen 2007, and references therein). 15 Second, speakers store generalizations involving phonetic detail at multiple intersecting levels of categorization, for example word and segment (Bybee 2002, Pierrehumbert 2003 and references therein).…”

Section: Inhibited Sound Change 161mentioning

confidence: 99%

Inhibited sound change

Blevins

Wedel

2009

DIA

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The study of regular sound change reveals numerous types of exceptionality. The type studied here has the profile of regular sound change, but appears to be inhibited where homophony would result. The most widely cited cases of this phenomenon are reviewed and new cases presented. If sound change can be inhibited by impending homophony, how is this to be represented and understood? Here we offer a model of variation-based sound change where category evolution incorporates lexical competition. Lexical Character Displacement predicts accentuation of differences among similar words when syntagmatic disambiguation is limited. In the cases under discussion, this accentuation inhibits merger. However, as we show, the same principle can inhibit sound change altogether, or give rise to extreme phonological contrasts under similar conditions.

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Modelling sociophonetic variation

Cited by 54 publications

References 0 publications

Elephants can determine ethnicity, gender, and age from acoustic cues in human voices

Elephants can determine ethnicity, gender, and age from acoustic cues in human voices

Exploring the relationship between production and perception in the mid front vowels of U.S. English

Inhibited sound change

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