Whistled LanguagesThis monograph deals with curious and little-known acoustic systems of commun ication based on whistling that are in use at the present time in many parts of the world and have had, on the evidence available, even greater currency in the past. In spite of their wide distribution, they have not so far received the attention they might have been expected to attract: linguistically and in other ways they are most interesting. For it should be realized that they are much more than mere codes or conventional systems of signals; they function in exactly the same way as speech (in the sense we normally use the term), being in fact rather extraordinary realizations of the languages spoken in the re gions where they occur. They utilize the vocabulary, grammar and, in many cases to a large extent, the phonology of the local speech. However their phonetic system is profoundly modified acoustically and (in some cases less so) from the point of view of articulation, because the glottal tone of every day communication, the "voice", is repl aced by a whistl e which carries the in formation. The advantage of this procedure, from the point of view of the user, is a vastly increased range as well as, under certain circumstances, a degree of secrecy. It will be shown that whistled languages appear in two main, very different forms. |
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Contents
Introduction and Historical Sketch | 1 |
Ecology | 13 |
The Mechanism of Whistle Production | 44 |
Copyright | |
4 other sections not shown
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Common terms and phrases
acoustic Analysis animals appears articulation birds Canaries carry cavity characteristic clearly close communication comparable complete concerned considerations consonants course curves deal described dialect difficult distance effect example existence experiment fact finger French frequency front function give glide Gomera hand human important initial intelligibility interesting involved kind known Kusköy learning least less limited linguistic lips lower Mazateco means mechanism method mouth movements nasal natural noise normal observed occur ordinary particularly performance phonetic physical pitch position possible practice present produce question range reach realized receiver recorded region relatively remains resonance seems side signal Silbo similar situation sound Spanish species speech spoken stress technique thing tion tone tongue Turkish variations villages voice vowel whereas whistled form whistled languages whistlers whole wind writers
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | Whistled Languages Advanced Series in Agricultural Sciences Volume 13 of Communication and cybernetics, ISSN 0340-0034 |
| Authors | René Guy Busnel, André Classe |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Springer-Verlag, 1976 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Apr 28, 2008 |
| ISBN | 0387077138, 9780387077130 |
| Length | 117 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |