Whistled Speech and Language Ecology

Meyer, Julien

doi:10.1007/978-3-662-45837-2_4

Cited by 8 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Humans use different kinds of whistled systems, ranging from simple repertoires of codes for human-animal or human-human communication to the highly elaborate natural modality of speech commonly called “whistled language” or “whistled speech” (see reviews in Busnel and Classe, 1976 ; Meyer, 2015 ). In a human whistled language, the sender whistles syllables, words ( Figure 1 ), and sentences ( Figure 2 ) of the native human language, thus transposing spoken modal speech into a very different acoustic form to enable long distance dialogues as modulated whistles augment speech with properties of a real telecommunication system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relevance of Human Whistled Languages for the Analysis and Decoding of Dolphin Communication

2021

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Humans use whistled communications, the most elaborate of which are commonly called “whistled languages” or “whistled speech” because they consist of a natural type of speech. The principle of whistled speech is straightforward: people articulate words while whistling and thereby transform spoken utterances by simplifying them, syllable by syllable, into whistled melodies. One of the most striking aspects of this whistled transformation of words is that it remains intelligible to trained speakers, despite a reduced acoustic channel to convey meaning. It constitutes a natural traditional means of telecommunication that permits spoken communication at long distances in a large diversity of languages of the world. Historically, birdsong has been used as a model for vocal learning and language. But conversely, human whistled languages can serve as a model for elucidating how information may be encoded in dolphin whistle communication. In this paper, we elucidate the reasons why human whistled speech and dolphin whistles are interesting to compare. Both are characterized by similar acoustic parameters and serve a common purpose of long distance communication in natural surroundings in two large brained social species. Moreover, their differences – e.g., how they are produced, the dynamics of the whistles, and the types of information they convey – are not barriers to such a comparison. On the contrary, by exploring the structure and attributes found across human whistle languages, we highlight that they can provide an important model as to how complex information is and can be encoded in what appears at first sight to be simple whistled modulated signals. Observing details, such as processes of segmentation and coarticulation, in whistled speech can serve to advance and inform the development of new approaches for the analysis of whistle repertoires of dolphins, and eventually other species. Human whistled languages and dolphin whistles could serve as complementary test benches for the development of new methodologies and algorithms for decoding whistled communication signals by providing new perspectives on how information may be encoded structurally and organizationally.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relevance of Human Whistled Languages for the Analysis and Decoding of Dolphin Communication

2021

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“…Whistled speech is a natural speech register that enables distant communication by transposing spoken languages into whistles (for a review, see Meyer, 2015). Whistles have the advantage of traveling long distances with less degradation of the signal than spoken or shouted speech.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This procedure is language specific, relying on the whistlers’ selection of salient features of a given language, which explains its major interest for phoneticians. To date, all over the world, approximately 40 low-density and remote populations are known to have adapted their local language to this special speech register (Meyer, 2015). Among these, different strategies of transposition from spoken speech to whistled speech have been observed depending on a major typological distinction: tonal languages, in which tones carried by the pitch of the spoken voice distinguish lexical or grammatical meanings, versus non-tonal languages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In tonal languages (see Rialland, 2005 and Meyer, 2015, for reviews), in what is called ‘pitch-based whistling,’ whistles are focused on transposing the fundamental frequency (from the vibration of the vocal folds) to primarily encode the lexical tones. Therefore, in the whistled form of a tonal language, the vowel quality is completely excluded.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, strikingly, the whistled phonetic details that are selected during this procedure are sufficient for trained whistlers of non-tonal languages to recognize non-stereotyped sentences as well as to achieve a reasonable degree of word and syllable recognition. For example, in their seminal study on whistled Turkish, Busnel and colleagues showed that words are recognized at a rate of approximately 70%, whereas common whistled sentences are recognized at a rate of approximately 80–90% (see Busnel, 1970, Moles, 1970, and Meyer, 2015, for a review). It has been shown that systems of whistled vowels follow the same general organization in all the non-tonal languages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Categorization of Natural Whistled Vowels by Naïve Listeners of Different Language Background

2017

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Whistled speech in a non-tonal language consists of the natural emulation of vocalic and consonantal qualities in a simple modulated whistled signal. This special speech register represents a natural telecommunication system that enables high levels of sentence intelligibility by trained speakers and is not directly intelligible to naïve listeners. Yet, it is easily learned by speakers of the language that is being whistled, as attested by the current efforts of the revitalization of whistled Spanish in the Canary Islands. To better understand the relation between whistled and spoken speech perception, we look herein at how Spanish, French, and Standard Chinese native speakers, knowing nothing about whistled speech, categorized four Spanish whistled vowels. The results show that the listeners categorized differently depending on their native language. The Standard Chinese speakers demonstrated the worst performance on this task but were still able to associate a tonal whistle to vowel categories. Spanish speakers were the most accurate, and both Spanish and French participants were able to categorize the four vowels, although not as accurately as an expert whistler. These results attest that whistled speech can be used as a natural laboratory to test the perceptual processes of language.

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Scale in Language

Enfield

2023

Cognitive Science

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A central concern of the cognitive science of language since its origins has been the concept of the linguistic system. Recent approaches to the system concept in language point to the exceedingly complex relations that hold between many kinds of interdependent systems, but it can be difficult to know how to proceed when “everything is connected.” This paper offers a framework for tackling that challenge by identifying *scale* as a conceptual mooring for the interdisciplinary study of language systems. The paper begins by defining the scale concept—simply, the possibility for a measure to be larger or smaller in different instances of a system, such as a phonemic inventory, a word's frequency value in a corpus, or a speaker population. We review sites of scale difference in and across linguistic subsystems, drawing on findings from linguistic typology, grammatical description, morphosyntactic theory, psycholinguistics, computational corpus work, and social network demography. We consider possible explanations for scaling differences and constraints in language. We then turn to the question of *dependencies between* sites of scale difference in language, reviewing four sample domains of scale dependency: in phonological systems, across levels of grammatical structure (Menzerath's Law), in corpora (Zipf's Law and related issues), and in speaker population size. Finally, we consider the implications of the review, including the utility of a scale framework for generating new questions and inspiring methodological innovations and interdisciplinary collaborations in cognitive‐scientific research on language.

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Whistled Speech and Language Ecology

Cited by 8 publications

References 12 publications

The Relevance of Human Whistled Languages for the Analysis and Decoding of Dolphin Communication

The Relevance of Human Whistled Languages for the Analysis and Decoding of Dolphin Communication

Categorization of Natural Whistled Vowels by Naïve Listeners of Different Language Background

Scale in Language

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