Human Speech Sounds Research Articles

Correcting the record: Phonetic potential of primate vocal tracts and the legacy of Philip Lieberman (1934-2022).

The phonetic potential of nonhuman primate vocal tracts has been the subject of considerable contention in recent literature. Here, the work of Philip Lieberman (1934-2022) is considered at length, and two research papers-both purported challenges to Lieberman's theoretical work-and a review of Lieberman's scientific legacy are critically examined. I argue that various aspects of Lieberman's research have been consistently misinterpreted in the literature. A paper by Fitch et al.overestimates the would-be "speech-ready"capacities of a rhesus macaque, and the data presented nonetheless supports Lieberman's principal position-that nonhuman primates cannot articulate the full extent of human speech sounds. The suggestion that no vocal anatomical evolution was necessary for the evolution of human speech (as spoken by all normally developing humans) is not supported by phonetic or anatomical data. The second challenge, by Boë et al., attributes vowel-like qualities of baboon calls to articulatory capacities based on audio data; I argue that such "protovocalic"properties likely result from disparate articulatory maneuvers compared to human speakers. A review of Lieberman's scientific legacy by Boë et al.ascribes a view of speech evolution (which the authors term "laryngeal descent theory") to Lieberman, which contradicts his writings. The present article documents a pattern of incorrect interpretations of Lieberman's theoretical work in recent literature. Finally, the apparent trend of vowel-like formant dispersions in great ape vocalization literature is discussed with regard to Lieberman's theoretical work. The review concludes that the "Lieberman account"of primate vocal tract phonetic capacities remains supported by research: the ready articulation of fully human speech reflects species-unique anatomy.

Selectivity to acoustic features of human speech in the auditory cortex of the mouse

A better understanding of the neural mechanisms of speech processing can have a major impact in the development of strategies for language learning and in addressing disorders that affect speech comprehension. Technical limitations in research with human subjects hinder a comprehensive exploration of these processes, making animal models essential for advancing the characterization of how neural circuits make speech perception possible. Here, we investigated the mouse as a model organism for studying speech processing and explored whether distinct regions of the mouse auditory cortex are sensitive to specific acoustic features of speech. We found that mice can learn to categorize frequency-shifted human speech sounds based on differences in formant transitions (FT) and voice onset time (VOT). Moreover, neurons across various auditory cortical regions were selective to these speech features, with a higher proportion of speech-selective neurons in the dorso-posterior region. Last, many of these neurons displayed mixed-selectivity for both features, an attribute that was most common in dorsal regions of the auditory cortex. Our results demonstrate that the mouse serves as a valuable model for studying the detailed mechanisms of speech feature encoding and neural plasticity during speech-sound learning.

Psychological and Physiological Effects of Low-Level Meaningful Artificial Sounds on Intellectual Tasks

AbstractThe present study aimed to investigate the psychological and physiological effects of low-level meaningful artificial sounds on intellectual tasks. The psychological factors related to the degree of disturbance, concentration, and stress, as measured by subjective evaluation, were compared with the degree of physiological stress, as measured using salivary alpha-amylase activity. The results indicated that human speech and chewing sounds caused similar levels of psychological stress while performing intellectual tasks; however, chewing sounds caused comparatively less physiological stress than did human speech sounds. These findings suggest that depending on the sound stimulus, psychological and physiological stress characteristics may not coincide.

Phonological Change in Hebrew Words Borrowed into Palestinian Arabic in the Hebron City

Introduction: Phonology is one of the core subfields of linguistics that involves the organization and use of human speech sounds, or phonemes, in a language. Over time, the pronunciation principles of a language may change, resulting in a phenomenon called phonological change. Phonological change occurs when language users modify the distribution of phonemes in a language. The current study aimed to explain the phonological changes that occur in Hebrew words borrowed into Palestinian Arabic in Hebron city, using a borrowing scale and to explain the differences in phonological forms between Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic by comparing the original Hebrew words with the borrowed Hebrew words in terms of the phonetic modifications made in Palestinian Arabic.
 Methodology: The study involved 100 Arabic-speaking Palestinians of both genders residing in Hebron city, most of whom spoke Hebrew and worked with Jews regularly. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with each participant to achieve the objectives of the study. The interviews were recorded, and the questions focused on their profession, favorite meals, daily routines, frequently visited places, education, and technology. A total of 32 hours of conversations were recorded and analyzed.
 Results: The results indicated that the most common types of phonological changes in Palestinian Arabic were the substitution phenomenon (consonant substitution and vowel substitution), epenthesis, and deletion.
 Conclusion: It can be concluded that the lexical borrowing of Hebrew words by Palestinian Arabic has led to various phonological changes to the Palestinian Arabic lexicon in Hebron.

Improving voice detection in real life scenarios: differentiating television and human speech at older adults’ houses

The use of voice-operated robots in real-life settings introduces multiple issues as opposed to the use of them in controlled, laboratory conditions. In our study, we introduced conversation robots in the homes of 18 older adults’ homes to increase the conversation activities of the participants. A manual examination of the audio data the robot considered a human voice showed that a considerable amount was from television sounds present in the participants’ homes. We used this data to train a neural network that can differentiate between human speech and speech-like sounds from television, achieving high metrics. We extended our analysis into how the voices of the participants contain inherent patterns that can be general or uncommon and how this affects performance of our algorithm in our attempts to identify human speech with or without these patterns.

Speech sound discrimination by Mongolian gerbils

The present study establishes the Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus) as a model for investigating the perception of human speech sounds. We report data on the discrimination of logatomes (CVCs - consonant-vowel-consonant combinations with outer consonants /b/, /d/, /s/ and /t/ and central vowels /a/, /aː/, /ɛ/, /eː/, /ɪ/, /iː/, /ɔ/, /oː/, /ʊ/ and /uː/, VCVs - vowel-consonant-vowel combinations with outer vowels /a/, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ and central consonants /b/, /d/, /f/, /g/, /k/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /s/, /t/ and /v/) by gerbils. Four gerbils were trained to perform an oddball target detection paradigm in which they were required to discriminate a deviant CVC or VCV in a sequence of CVC or VCV standards, respectively. The experiments were performed with an ICRA-1 noise masker with speech-like spectral properties, and logatomes of multiple speakers were presented at various signal-to-noise ratios. Response latencies were measured to generate perceptual maps employing multidimensional scaling, which visualize the gerbils’ internal maps of the sounds. The dimensions of the perceptual maps were correlated to multiple phonetic features of the speech sounds for evaluating which features of vowels and consonants are most important for the discrimination. The perceptual representation of vowels and consonants in gerbils was similar to that of humans, although gerbils needed higher signal-to-noise ratios for the discrimination of speech sounds than humans. The gerbils’ discrimination of vowels depended on differences in the frequencies of the first and second formant determined by tongue height and position. Consonants were discriminated based on differences in combinations of their articulatory features. The similarities in the perception of logatomes by gerbils and humans renders the gerbil a suitable model for human speech sound discrimination.

Auditory Brainstem Responses Predict Behavioral Deficits in Rats with Varying Levels of Noise-Induced Hearing Loss

Intense noise exposure is a leading cause of hearing loss, which results in degraded speech sound discrimination ability, particularly in noisy environments. The development of an animal model of speech discrimination deficits due to noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) would enable testing of potential therapies to improve speech sound processing. Rats can accurately detect and discriminate human speech sounds in the presence of quiet and background noise. Further, it is known that profound hearing loss results in functional deafness in rats. In this study, we generated rats with a range of impairments which model the large range of hearing impairments observed in patients with NIHL. One month after noise exposure, we stratified rats into three distinct deficit groups based on their auditory brainstem response (ABR) thresholds. These groups exhibited markedly different behavioral outcomes across a range of tasks. Rats with moderate hearing loss (30 dB shifts in ABR threshold) were not impaired in speech sound detection or discrimination. Rats with severe hearing loss (55 dB shifts) were impaired at discriminating speech sounds in the presence of background noise. Rats with profound hearing loss (70 dB shifts) were unable to detect and discriminate speech sounds above chance level performance. Across groups, ABR threshold accurately predicted behavioral performance on all tasks. This model of long-term impaired speech discrimination in noise, demonstrated by the severe group, mimics the most common clinical presentation of NIHL and represents a useful tool for developing and improving interventions to target restoration of hearing.

The role of vocal learning in call acquisition of wild grey seal pups.

Pinnipeds have been identified as one of the best available models for the study of vocal learning. Experimental evidence for their learning skills is demonstrated with advanced copying skills, particularly in formant structure when copying human speech sounds and melodies. By contrast, almost no data are available on how learning skills are used in their own communication systems. We investigated the impact of playing modified seal sounds in a breeding colony of grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) to study how acoustic input influenced vocal development of eight pups. Sequences of two or three seal pup calls were edited so that the average peak frequency between calls in a sequence changed up or down. We found that seals copied the specific stimuli played to them and that copies became more accurate over time. The differential response of different groups showed that vocal production learning was used to achieve conformity, suggesting that geographical variation in seal calls can be caused by horizontal cultural transmission. While learning of pup calls appears to have few benefits, we suggest that it also affects the development of the adult repertoire, which may facilitate social interactions such as mate choice.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vocal learning in animals and humans’.

Метафорический образ Байкала в рекламном туристическом нарративе

The study aims to determine the range of the linguistic means with the help of which the metaphorical image of the Baikal is created in the advertising tourist narrative. Scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time the features of the representation of the Baikal’s metaphorical image in the advertising tourist narrative were identified. The attained results have shown that the metaphorical representation of the Baikal’s image is produced through the naturemorphic metaphorical model (landscape, terrain, seasons, atmospheric phenomena, sphere of outer space) and the anthropomorphic metaphorical model (human physical appearance, parts and organs of the human body, character traits, speech and nonspeech sounds, emotional and physical states).

On the Synthesis of Some Artificial Sounds and Words of Human Speech

The paper describes the results of numerical experiments on the decomposition of some sounds and words of a person's speech into separate waves with slowly drifting amplitudes, frequencies, phases and their reverse summation in order to identify factors that are both important and not important for automatic speech recognition. The objective of this study is investigation the mathematical features of various sounds and words of human speech without using the method of Fourier transforms. Instead of Fourier transforms, the approximation method developed earlier by the author is used. This method allow expand of periodic or almost periodic functions to sum of modes with slowly varying (drifting) parameters - amplitudes, frequencies, phases. Such decompositions were carried out for samples of vowel sounds, simple syllables and words. After that, the reverse summation of the drifting modes was carried out. Before summation the modes, their parameters were deliberately distorted in order to identify factors, both significant and insignificant for the essence of sounds. The functions obtained in this way are of the nature of artificial sound functions It turned out, that for vowel sounds amplitudes of modes may be averaged over long time without lost the essence of sounds. The phases of sounds may be changed by adding any random constant value without lost their essence too. It has been found that In many cases, for to find the parameters, it is convenient use not the sound function itself, but its time derivative. It was shown, that amplitude of summing modes of sound function may be represent as sum of several Gaussian function as for simple sounds, as for syllables. The appropriate mathematical formulas and tables of parameters of artificial sound functions presented

Tickling in the Light of Slavic Vocabulary and Mythology (Polesian Data on a Common Slavic Background)

The authors of this article attempt to reveal the symbolism of tickling as an aggressive behaviour of mythological characters using ethnolinguistic methods. This analysis is carried out on the basis of the study of Polesie dialectal vocabulary and phraseology related to this demonological function, with the involvement of a wide range of common Slavic linguistic data, and a significant body of folk mythological beliefs. The work includes three thematic sections: terminology and ways of nominating tickling in Slavic languages and dialects; tickling as a harmful function of evil spirits directed at a person; and tickling as an action of mythologized animals aimed at livestock. Geographically, the combination of the functions of tickling in a mermaid (rusalki) and a weasel can be observed in at least two regions – in Polesie and the Upper Volga. In the language and in traditional culture, there is a similarity in the ratio and interaction of tickling as a tactile action and acoustic “tickling” associated with various types of sounds emanating from living beings (people, animals, birds, and insects). In the language, a portion of onomatopoeic verb vocabulary is built in parallel to the words for tickling, which serve to convey the sounds of human speech, animal cries, sharp noises made by people, etc., which indicates a kind of mutual attraction between intense verb iterations related, on the one hand, to the tactile, and on the other, to the audible. In the folk tradition, the tickle motif creates a correlation between the strong physical irritation that mythological characters (demons and animals) inflict on people and livestock with their annoyingly repetitive actions, and the auditory perception of restless, often annoying, cries and sounds of animal origin,which are endowed with folklore and some demonological characteristics.

Categorical Auditory Working Memory in Crows.

SummaryThe ability to group sensory data into behaviorally meaningful classes and to maintain these perceptual categories active in working memory is key to intelligent behavior. Here, we show that carrion crows, highly vocal and cognitively advanced corvid songbirds, possess categorical auditory working memory. The crows were trained in a delayed match-to-category task that required them to flexibly match remembered sounds based on the upward or downward shift of the sounds' frequency modulation. After training, the crows instantaneously classified novel sounds into the correct auditory categories. The crows showed sharp category boundaries as a function of the relative frequency interval of the modulation. In addition, the crows generalized frequency-modulated sounds within a category and correctly classified novel sounds kept in working memory irrespective of other acoustic features of the sound. This suggests that crows can form and actively memorize auditory perceptual categories in the service of cognitive control of their goal-directed behaviors.

Epigenetic tuning of brain signal entropy in emergent human social behavior

BackgroundHow the brain develops accurate models of the external world and generates appropriate behavioral responses is a vital question of widespread multidisciplinary interest. It is increasingly understood that brain signal variability—posited to enhance perception, facilitate flexible cognitive representations, and improve behavioral outcomes—plays an important role in neural and cognitive development. The ability to perceive, interpret, and respond to complex and dynamic social information is particularly critical for the development of adaptive learning and behavior. Social perception relies on oxytocin-regulated neural networks that emerge early in development.MethodsWe tested the hypothesis that individual differences in the endogenous oxytocinergic system early in life may influence social behavioral outcomes by regulating variability in brain signaling during social perception. In study 1, 55 infants provided a saliva sample at 5 months of age for analysis of individual differences in the oxytocinergic system and underwent electroencephalography (EEG) while listening to human vocalizations at 8 months of age for the assessment of brain signal variability. Infant behavior was assessed via parental report. In study 2, 60 infants provided a saliva sample and underwent EEG while viewing faces and objects and listening to human speech and water sounds at 4 months of age. Infant behavior was assessed via parental report and eye tracking.ResultsWe show in two independent infant samples that increased brain signal entropy during social perception is in part explained by an epigenetic modification to the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and accounts for significant individual differences in social behavior in the first year of life. These results are measure-, context-, and modality-specific: entropy, not standard deviation, links OXTR methylation and infant behavior; entropy evoked during social perception specifically explains social behavior only; and only entropy evoked during social auditory perception predicts infant vocalization behavior.ConclusionsDemonstrating these associations in infancy is critical for elucidating the neurobiological mechanisms accounting for individual differences in cognition and behavior relevant to neurodevelopmental disorders. Our results suggest that an epigenetic modification to the oxytocin receptor gene and brain signal entropy are useful indicators of social development and may hold potential diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic value.

Dogs perceive and spontaneously normalize formant-related speaker and vowel differences in human speech sounds.

Domesticated animals have been shown to recognize basic phonemic information from human speech sounds and to recognize familiar speakers from their voices. However, whether animals can spontaneously identify words across unfamiliar speakers (speaker normalization) or spontaneously discriminate between unfamiliar speakers across words remains to be investigated. Here, we assessed these abilities in domestic dogs using the habituation-dishabituation paradigm. We found that while dogs habituated to the presentation of a series of different short words from the same unfamiliar speaker, they significantly dishabituated to the presentation of a novel word from a new speaker of the same gender. This suggests that dogs spontaneously categorized the initial speaker across different words. Conversely, dogs who habituated to the same short word produced by different speakers of the same gender significantly dishabituated to a novel word, suggesting that they had spontaneously categorized the word across different speakers. Our results indicate that the ability to spontaneously recognize both the same phonemes across different speakers, and cues to identity across speech utterances from unfamiliar speakers, is present in domestic dogs and thus not a uniquely human trait.

Formant Modification through Vocal Production Learning in Gray Seals

Vocal production learning is a rare communication skill and has only been found in selected avian and mammalian species [1-4]. Although humans use learned formants and voiceless sounds to encode most lexical information [5], evidence for vocal learning in other animals tends to focus on the modulation pattern of the fundamental frequency [3, 4]. Attempts to teach mammals to produce human speech sounds have largely been unsuccessful, most notably in extensive studies on great apes [5]. The limited evidence for formant copying in mammals raises the question whether advanced learned control over formant production is uniquely human. We show that gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) have the ability to match modulations in peak frequency patterns of call sequences or melodies by modifying the formants in their own calls, moving outside of their normal repertoire's distribution of frequencies and even copying human vowel sounds. Seals also demonstrated enhanced auditory memory for call sequences by accurately copying sequential changes in peak frequency and the number of calls played to them. Our results demonstrate that formants can be influenced by vocal production learning in non-human vocal learners, providing a mammalian substrate for the evolution of flexible information coding in formants as found in human language.

МІКРОПРОМЕНЕВЕ РЕНТГЕНОГРАФУВАННЯ ЯК ОДИН ІЗ НАЙСУЧАСНІШИХ ПРИЙОМІВ АРТИКУЛЯЦІЙНИХ ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ

The article substantiates the necessity of phonetic, in particular articulation, researches. The role of articulatory research in the study of the nature of sound units and their significance for linguistics and practical use are determined. The preconditions for studying the sound system of the language with the help of experimental techniques are specified. The history of occurrence and development of experi- mental phonetic researches in Ukraine and in the world is analyzed. The main methods of articulation research, including types of X-ray examination as one of the most important articulatory techniques, are considered. There are brought to the light the history and procedure of film-roentgenography with its implementation in Ukrainian linguistics. A number of tasks performed by experimental phonetics, as well as the possibility of applying its results in different fields of knowledge are outlined. The article is focused on X-ray microbeam – one of the most contemporary types of X-ray re- search, which was created by the Japanese scientist Osama Fujimura in the second half of the last century. The history of creating the device for such studies is traced, the procedure of collecting articu- lation information (preparation for recording, the placement of tracking beads, type of the articulated material and tasks set forth) is described. The main advantages of X-ray microbeam in comparison with other methods are determined: it gives information about all the sounds of human speech, does not distort the pronunciation, causes minimal harm to health, allows studying large masses of information quickly and automatically. At the and, the conclusion about the feasibility of usage X-ray microbeam in experimental phonet- ics is made. It is confired the significance of such a method, which lies in the interdisciplinary type of research, the generation of new knowledge in the field of phonetics and the addition of existing infor- mation with the help of the latest technologies.

Correction to 'Imitation of novel conspecific and human speech sounds in the killer whale (Orcinus orca)'.

You have accessMoreSectionsView PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Cite this article Abramson J. Z., Hernández-Lloreda M. V., García L., Colmenares F., Aboitiz F. and Call J. 2018Correction to ‘Imitation of novel conspecific and human speech sounds in the killer whale (Orcinus orca)’Proc. R. Soc. B.2852018028720180287http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0287SectionYou have accessCorrectionCorrection to ‘Imitation of novel conspecific and human speech sounds in the killer whale (Orcinus orca)’ J. Z. Abramson J. Z. Abramson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7106-6419 Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author , M. V. Hernández-Lloreda M. V. Hernández-Lloreda Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author , L. García L. García Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author , F. Colmenares F. Colmenares Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author , F. Aboitiz F. Aboitiz Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author and J. Call J. Call Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author J. Z. Abramson J. Z. Abramson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7106-6419 Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author , M. V. Hernández-Lloreda M. V. Hernández-Lloreda Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author , L. García L. García Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author , F. Colmenares F. Colmenares Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author , F. Aboitiz F. Aboitiz Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author and J. Call J. Call Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author Published:21 February 2018https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0287This article corrects the followingResearch ArticleImitation of novel conspecific and human speech sounds in the killer whale (Orcinus orca)https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.2171 José Z. Abramson, Mª Victoria Hernández-Lloreda, Lino García, Fernando Colmenares, Francisco Aboitiz and Josep Call volume 285issue 1871Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences31 January 2018Proc. R. Soc. B285, 20172171. (Published Online 31 January 2018) (doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.2171)The correction is minor. It is to the number assigned to the list for two authors affiliations, which is currently:6Departamento de Psicobiología, Facultad de Psicología, Campus de Somosaguas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28223 Madrid, Spain7Dpto. Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones ETSIST, UPM, SpainThis should be corrected to:6Departamento de Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones ETSIST. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain7Departamento de Psicobiología, Facultad de Psicología, Campus de Somosaguas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28223 Madrid, Spain. Previous ArticleNext Article VIEW FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD PDF FiguresRelatedReferencesDetailsRelated articlesImitation of novel conspecific and human speech sounds in the killer whale (Orcinus orca)31 January 2018Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences This Issue28 February 2018Volume 285Issue 1873 Article InformationDOI:https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.0287PubMed:29467271Published by:Royal SocietyOnline ISSN:1471-2954History: Published online21/02/2018Published in print28/02/2018 License:© 2018 The Author(s)Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. Citations and impact Subjectsbehaviourcognition Large datasets are available through Proceedings B's partnership with Dryad

Imitation of novel conspecific and human speech sounds in the killer whale (Orcinus orca).

Vocal imitation is a hallmark of human spoken language, which, along with other advanced cognitive skills, has fuelled the evolution of human culture. Comparative evidence has revealed that although the ability to copy sounds from conspecifics is mostly uniquely human among primates, a few distantly related taxa of birds and mammals have also independently evolved this capacity. Remarkably, field observations of killer whales have documented the existence of group-differentiated vocal dialects that are often referred to as traditions or cultures and are hypothesized to be acquired non-genetically. Here we use a do-as-I-do paradigm to study the abilities of a killer whale to imitate novel sounds uttered by conspecific (vocal imitative learning) and human models (vocal mimicry). We found that the subject made recognizable copies of all familiar and novel conspecific and human sounds tested and did so relatively quickly (most during the first 10 trials and three in the first attempt). Our results lend support to the hypothesis that the vocal variants observed in natural populations of this species can be socially learned by imitation. The capacity for vocal imitation shown in this study may scaffold the natural vocal traditions of killer whales in the wild.

Correction: Experience with speech sounds is not necessary for cue trading by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus).

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0177676.].

The Standard of Speech Sounds-On a Reform for International Phonetic Alphabet

Elements and structures of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are imperfect and far from the standard. The IPA is too complex to learn and use directly for the most people. Few linguists can master the current IPA completely. The fatal shortcomings are that phonemes or symbols are too many, but syllables aren’t defined or counted in the IPA. The standard speech sounds or new IPA will be made according to the information theory. There are not only phonemes, but also syllables in the new IPA. The standard phonemes and syllables are the best codes of human speech sounds. The broad transcriptions are the standard sounds in the new IPA. The standard sounds and new IPA must become a production which can be learned and used by the global citizens directly and frequently.