Ancient Sounds: mixing acoustic phonetics, statistics and comparative philology to bring speech back from the past

古代声音：混合声学语音学、统计学和比较语言学，将语音带回过去

• 批准号: AH/M002993/1
• 负责人: John Coleman
• 金额: $ 8.1万
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FM002993%2F1
• 关键词: Ancient; Sounds; mixing; acoustic; phonetics

When Julius Caesar invaded Britain, declaring "veni, vidi, vici", how did he pronounce it? Was it "weany, weedy, weaky", as the schoolboy joke has it? How do we know - how can we know - how Latin or other dead languages were pronounced? 19th and 20th century scholarship developed methods for reconstructing the pronunciation of words from the past, and extended this to inferring the forms of words from a time before any written records exist. For example, from word-forms as diverse as Modern English "work", Old English "weorc", Old High German "werc", Latin "orgia", Greek "ergon", and Armenian "gorc", philologists infer a Proto-Indo-European stem uerg-, a formula hinting at a pronunciation something like "werg". But what did it actually sound like? In this project, I shall apply and further develop some new software methods developed in the last few years by me and my collaborator and project partner, the Cambridge statistics Professor John Aston, to triangulate backwards from contemporary audio recordings of simple words in modern languages to regenerate audible spoken words from the past. To achieve this we use speech signal processing techniques borrowed from speech synthesis to analyse the modern recordings, represent them using mathematical functions, infer possible and probably ancestral forms using computational statistical techniques, and finally convert the inferred ancestral forms back into audible speech, using speech synthesis. In our first experiments, we have been working on modelling sound changes that led to the current pronunciations of French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese digits, from earlier Romance words originally going back to Latin. In this project I shall extend this work to some Germanic languages (English, German dialects and Dutch), together with Modern Greek, to try to advance the horizon of audio reconstruction into the deeper past of the Indo-European language family. This enterprise is similar to the virtual reconstruction of e.g. the visualisation through animation of dinosaurs in documentaries or films, or the reconstruction of ancient pottery or other objects. If we only have a few sherds or bone-fragments to go on, the reconstruction of a vase or skull will be largely a virtual reconstruction, e.g. a drawing or model. Audio reconstruction is, equally, a virtual addition to our construction of the past. Previously, philologists have amassed a considerable and deep understanding of what sound changes have taken place in various languages, and to some extent, when; the how or why remain areas of speculation. Acoustic modelling of speech evolution makes possible an improved understanding of what, and casts light on how, if only by unveiling possibilities. And evolutionary modelling will benefit by more refined and empirically accurate models of language change; for instance by discovering whether or how historical change in language differs in detail from biological evolution. In addition to our specific technical aims, this type of work has wider ramifications for the dividing line that is normally drawn between science and humanities. This work storms across that line, bringing science and computation into an area of work that was previously firmly part of Classics and linguistics. Such a redrawing of disciplinary boundaries challenges and redefines old conceptions of the "two cultures" of arts vs. science. In this endeavour, each side needs the other: without the quantitative computational techniques from those sciences, comparative philologists are largely confined to written records and symbol-oriented methods; without linguistic-historical knowledge, statistical speech science would be forced to re-trace centuries of philological work, unncessarily (and perhaps unsuccessfully). This work brings new methods from science into an area of cultural studies, and deploys cultural knowledge to advance those new scientific methods. It demolishes a wall between "Science" and "Culture".

当尤利乌斯·凯撒入侵不列颠时，他宣布“veni，vidi，vici”，他是如何发音的？它是不是像一个学生笑话所说的那样“杂草丛生、虚弱乏力”？我们怎么知道--我们怎么知道--拉丁语或其他已消亡的语言是如何发音的？19世纪和20世纪的学者们开发了重建过去单词发音的方法，并将其扩展到推断任何书面记录之前的单词的形式。例如，从现代英语“work”、古英语“weorc”、古高德语“WERC”、拉丁语“orgia”、希腊语“ergon”和亚美尼亚语“Gorc”等不同的词形中，语言学家推断出一个原始印欧词干uerg-，这一公式暗示了类似于“weg”的发音。但它实际上听起来是什么样子呢？在这个项目中，我将应用并进一步开发一些新的软件方法，这些方法是我和我的合作者兼项目合作伙伴剑桥大学统计学教授约翰·阿斯顿在过去几年里开发的，从现代语言中简单单词的当代录音向后三角测量，重新生成过去的可听口语单词。为了实现这一点，我们使用从语音合成借用的语音信号处理技术来分析现代记录，使用数学函数表示它们，使用计算统计技术推断可能的和可能的祖先形式，最后使用语音合成将推断的祖先形式转换回可听语音。在我们的第一个实验中，我们一直致力于模拟声音变化，导致法语、意大利语、西班牙语和葡萄牙语数字的当前发音，从早期的浪漫词回到拉丁语。在这个项目中，我将把这项工作扩展到一些日耳曼语言(英语、德国方言和荷兰语)，以及现代希腊语，试图将音频重建的地平线推进到印欧语系更深的过去。这项事业类似于虚拟重建，例如通过纪录片或电影中恐龙的动画可视化，或重建古代陶器或其他物品。如果我们只有几块碎片或骨头碎片可以继续，那么花瓶或头骨的重建将在很大程度上是一种虚拟重建，例如图纸或模型。同样，音频重建实际上是对我们对过去的构建的补充。在此之前，语言学家已经积累了相当多和深入的了解，各种语言发生了什么声音变化，在某种程度上，何时发生；如何或为什么发生，仍然是猜测的领域。语音进化的声学模型使人们有可能更好地理解什么，并揭示了如何进化，即使只是通过揭示可能性。进化模型将受益于更精确和更准确的语言变化模型；例如，通过发现语言的历史变化是否或如何在细节上不同于生物进化。除了我们的具体技术目标之外，这类工作还对通常被划分为科学和人文的分界线产生了更广泛的影响。这项工作跨越了这条线，将科学和计算带入了一个以前坚定地属于古典学和语言学的工作领域。这种学科界限的重新划分挑战并重新定义了艺术与科学这两种文化的旧观念。在这一努力中，双方都需要对方：如果没有这些科学的定量计算技术，比较语言学家在很大程度上局限于书面记录和面向符号的方法；如果没有语言历史知识，统计言语科学将被迫重新追溯几个世纪的语言学工作，这是不必要的(或许也是不成功的)。这项工作将科学的新方法带入文化研究领域，并运用文化知识来推动这些新的科学方法。它摧毁了“科学”和“文化”之间的一堵墙。

项目成果

The Statistical Analysis of Acoustic Phonetic Data: Exploring Differences Between Spoken Romance Languages

声学语音数据的统计分析：探索罗曼语口语之间的差异

• DOI: 10.1111/rssc.12258
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: Applied Statistics
• 作者: Pigoli D

Modeling geographic variation in pronunciation of United Kingdom English

模拟英国英语发音的地理变化

• DOI: 10.1121/1.5036487
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• 作者: Henley K

Gaussian tree constraints applied to acoustic linguistic functional data

高斯树约束应用于声学语言功能数据

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmva.2016.09.015
• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: Journal of Multivariate Analysis
• 影响因子: 1.6
• 作者: Shiers N