The Influence of Insect Noise on Human Language

一种语言的语音系统的形状和大小是由许多不同的因素，甚至可能是由随机事件决定的。其中一组因素涉及讲者群体居住环境的物理特性（即气候、地理、生物）。在某些环境中，昆虫会产生巨大的噪音，这可能会影响人类说话者和听众之间的语音传输。本研究从比较语言学和实验语音学的方法出发，从三个方面进行实证研究，探讨蝉的噪声干扰了声音系统发展的假说，特别是干扰了咝咝声的感知和产生。它涉及（a）在有和没有噪音的环境中使用的语言的类型学比较;（B）直接实验调查噪音对人类听众对咝音的感知的影响;和（c）对长期暴露于噪音和没有长期暴露于噪音的扬声器产生的咝音进行声学分析。拟议项目的结果将提供第一个经验证据的影响昆虫噪音的感知和生产的咝咝声，更广泛的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.