Typology and acoustic strategies of whistled languages: Phonetic comparison and perceptual cues of whistled vowels

Abstract

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0025100308003277How to cite this article: Julien Meyer (2008). Typology and acoustic strategies of whistled languages: Phonetic comparison and perceptual cues of whistled vowels.Whistled speech is a complementary natural style of speech to be found in more than thirty languages of the world. This phenomenon, also called 'whistled language', enables distant communication amid the background noise of rural environments. Whistling is used as a sound source instead of vocal fold vibration. The resulting acoustic signal is characterised by a narrow band of frequencies encoding the words. Such a strong reduction of the frequency spectrum of the voice explains why whistled speech is languagespecific, relying on selected salient key features of a given language. However, for a fluent whistler, a spoken sentence transposed into whistles remains highly intelligible in several languages, and whistled languages therefore represent a valuable source of information for phoneticians. This study is based on original data collected in seven different cultural communities or gathered during perceptual experiments which are described here. Whistling is first found to extend the strategy at play in shouted voice. Various whistled speech practices are then described using a new typology. A statistical analysis of whistled vowels in non-tonal languages is presented, as well as their categorisation by non-whistlers. The final discussion proposes that whistled vowels in non-tonal languages are a reflection of the perceptual integration of formant proximities in the spoken voice.

Evidence of biphonation and source–filter interactions in the bugles of male North American wapiti (Cervus canadensis)

“…This illustrates how different species have evolved different solutions to the challenge of producing signals that are characterised by a dense spectrum (low F0) and a high amplitude (high G0) with the relatively small larynges of terrestrial mammals. The emergence of whistle languages in several human cultures, where whistling takes over formant-based communication when communicating over long distances in mountainous environments, also provides a very interesting convergence (Classe, 1957;Rialland, 2005;Meyer, 2008). We suggest that further studies should investigate which evolutionary pressures and environmental constraints have led to the emergence of biphonation (e.g.…”

Phonetics, Phonology and Typology of Whistled Languages

“…The acoustic resonance of the whistled signal occurs primarily in the front oral cavities of the reduced vocal tract, which correspond approximately to those that play an important role in defining the upper formants of standard speech (above the 1st formant). This situation is why several previous descriptions have noted that whistled speech signals bear frequency shapes similar in several aspects to the 2nd formant of spoken speech, which occupies a central space in the vocal tract (Busnel and Classe 1976;Rialland 2005;Meyer 2008). Classe (1956) is the first to note that the points of articulation targeted by the tongue during the pronunciation of consonants in Silbo Spanish are similar to those of spoken Spanish.…”

“…In a previous work, we analyzed the frequency distribution of whistled vowels in various non-tonal languages that were recorded during our field inquiry (Meyer 2008). We found that each vowel position is whistled in a definite frequency interval and that each whistled language has its own characteristic frequency distribution of whistled vowels, which is related to how spoken vowels are articulated in each language ( Fig.…”

“…Comparative studies have shown that whistlers choose to prioritize emulation of spoken speech in specific portions of the frequency spectrum of the voice as a function of the phonological structure of their language, that is, as a function of their language's rules of the systematic organization of ordinary spoken sounds. A major distinction in strategy is noted for tonal versus non-tonal languages (Stern 1957;Busnel and Classe 1976;Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok 1976;Rialland 2005;Meyer 2005Meyer , 2008. For most non-tonal languages (e.g., Greek, Karaja, Turkish, Spanish, Wayãpi), in what is called formant-based whistling, whistlers approximate the vocal tract articulation used in spoken form; this approach provokes a whistled adaptation of vowel and consonant qualities carried by the timbre of the voice.…”

“…For tonal languages (such as Gavião or Chinantec, Hmong, Akha, Mixtec, Mazatec, Moba, and Suruí), in what is called pitch-based whistling, the situation is different because the whistles are not focused on emulating the timbre but instead the pitch of the voice, transposing the fundamental frequency of the vibration of the vocal cords to primarily encode the lexical tones. Therefore, in the whistled form of a tonal language, the vowel quality (encoded by timbre) is completely excluded (Cowan 1948;Busnel and Classe 1976;Rialland 2005;Meyer 2008) ( Fig. 1.2).…”