The Influence of Insect Noise on Human Language

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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.