CAREER: Phonetic and Phonological Structure in Musical Surrogate Languages

语言和音乐都是人类固有的表达系统。两者的交叉点是“音乐替代语言”——将语音编码到乐器上，如木琴、笛子或鼓（通常被称为“会说话的鼓”）。这些替代系统遍布世界各地，通过将音高或语音节奏等语言元素转换到乐器的音符和节奏上，人们可以在不张嘴的情况下进行交流。关于语言如何以这种方式映射到音乐的规则，这些规则因语言，乐器或传统而有多大变化，或者人们如何理解这种音乐代码，我们知之甚少。回答这些问题将揭示语言声音结构的细微差别，哪些元素对说话者和音乐家来说是最突出和最容易理解的，以及语言和音乐的组织和处理中巨大的重叠。随着大多数音乐替代语言濒临灭绝，捕捉和分析这些语言传统是至关重要的，因为它们推动了人类交流的界限，并可以增强语言基础设施。这个项目是一项音乐替代语言的比较研究，该研究基于它们所基于的口语的详细语音和音系文献。该研究将针对不同仪器和不同语言群体的几种替代系统，收集实验数据以确定替代编码规则，同时建立高质量视听材料的多用途档案。将开发一种精简的方法，包括自动记录和转录系统以及可与语言转录最佳实践工具集成的标准化注释格式。这一方法将传播给学生和其他学者，以建立一个研究人员社区，他们可以帮助解决记录世界替代语言的艰巨任务。由此产生的分析将有助于替代语类型学的发展，该类型学可用于识别语言特征、音乐限制和社会用途之间的相关性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Language and music are both inherently human systems of expression. At the intersection of the two are "musical surrogate languages" - the encoding of speech onto musical instruments such as xylophone, flutes, or drums (often referred to as "talking drums"). Found all over the world, these surrogate systems allow people to communicate without ever opening their mouths by transposing linguistic elements such as pitch or speech rhythm onto the notes and rhythms of a musical instrument. Very little is known about the rules of how language is mapped to music in this way, how much these rules vary by language, instrument, or tradition, or how people can comprehend this musical code. Answering these questions will shed light on the nuances of language sound structures, which elements are most salient and accessible to speakers and musicians, and the immense overlap in the organization and processing of language and music. With the majority of musical surrogate languages critically endangered, it is essential that these linguistic traditions be captured and analyzed as they push the boundaries of human communication and can enhance language infrastructure. This project is a comparative study of musical surrogate languages grounded in detailed phonetic and phonological documentation of the spoken languages on which they are based. The research will target several surrogate systems on different instruments and in different language groups, gathering experimental data to determine the rules of surrogate encoding while building a multi-use archive of high-quality audiovisual materials. A streamlined methodology will be developed, including automated recording and transcription systems and a standardized annotation format that can be integrated with best practice tools for linguistic transcription. This methodology will be disseminated to students and other scholars to build a community of researchers who can help tackle the enormous task of documenting the world's surrogate languages. Resulting analyses will contribute to the development of a typology of surrogate speech, which can be used to identify correlations between linguistic features, musical constraints, and social uses.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.