The Influence of Insect Noise on Human Language

一种语言的声音系统的形状和大小是由许多不同的因素决定的，甚至可能是随机事件。一组因素涉及讲语群体所处环境的物理特性（即气候、地理、生物）。在某些环境中，昆虫会产生巨大的噪音，可能会影响说话者和听者之间的语音传输。拟议的项目调查了一种假设，即蝉产生的噪音干扰了对声音的感知和产生，特别是，从而影响了声音系统的发展。本研究结合比较语言学和实验语音学的方法，对这一假设采取了三方面的实证方法。它涉及(a)在有蝉声和没有蝉声的环境中使用的语言的类型学比较；(b)直接实验研究蝉声对人类听觉感知的影响；(c)对长期暴露于蝉声和不暴露于蝉声的扬声器产生的声音进行声学分析。拟议项目的结果将提供第一个经验证据，证明昆虫噪音对声音的感知和产生的影响，以及更广泛地说明环境因素对口语的影响。

The shape and size of the sound system of a language are determined by many different factors and possibly even by stochastic events. One group of factors concerns the physical properties (i.e. climatic, geographic, biological) of the environment in which a community of speakers resides. In some environments insects produce a loud noise that could have an impact on the transmission of speech between human speakers and listeners. The proposed project investigates the hypothesis that noise produced by cicadas interferes with the perception and production of sibilants, in particular, and can thus influence the development of sound systems.The proposed study takes a three-fold empirical approach to this hypothesis, combining methods from comparative linguistics and experimental phonetics. It involves (a) a typological comparison of languages spoken in environments with and without cicada noise; (b) direct experimental investigation of the impact of cicada noise on human listeners' perception of sibilants; and (c) an acoustic analysis of sibilants produced by speakers with and without long-term exposure to cicada noise. The results of the proposed project will provide first empirical evidence of the impact of insect noise on the perception and production of sibilants, and more broadly on the influence of environmental factors on spoken language.