In this study, we investigated the prosody of domestic cat meows produced in different contexts. Prosodic cues –i.e., variation in intonation, duration, voice quality and fundamental frequency – in humans as well as innonhuman animals carry information about idiosyncratic traits of the signaller, including sex, age, and physicaland mental state. The duration, fundamental frequency (F0) and intonation in a sample of 969 meows recordedin seven different contexts (i.e., cuddle, door, food, greeting, lifting, play, cat carrier) were analysed using linearmixed effects regression and generalized additive models. In this, we controlled for cat age and sex, as meowsproduced by old cats had lower mean F0 than those produced by young cats, and female cats produced meowswith higher mean F0 than male cats. We found significant effects of context on duration and mean F0, but not onF0 range. Furthermore, the results showed that the intonation of meows produced by cats in a cat carrier displayeda falling pattern, while that of meows produced in cuddle and door contexts was relatively level, and thatof meows produced in the other contexts consisted of combinations of rising and falling. The average slope ofmeows produced in cat carrier and play contexts was negative, while that of meows produced in the othercontexts was positive. We argue that this prosodic variation reflects the cats’ mental or emotional state, becauseof valence and arousal differences associated with the various contexts that were included in the study. Furtherstudies will need to confirm this. In addition, we also plan additional analyses of spectral and voice qualityparameters in meows and other cat vocalisation types.

In 2009 the author initiated his “zoonetics” activities by recording purring in the male cheetah Caine as well as in the domestic cat Misha and presented the results at the Fonetik Meeting in 2010 at Lund University. Subsequent studies of cheetah purring then followed, including a study of purring in Caine’s daughter Jade and son Parker in 2013, Jade at the time 7 months old. In May 2019 the author recorded Jade again (now 7 years old) and was then able to study whether any changes in her purring had occurred and, specifically, whether Jade as an adult had kept her cub characteristics or was now more similar to her father, who was 7 years old when he was recorded. To the best of my knowledge this study presents the first longitudinal study of purring in a cheetah.

Objective

A comprehensive understanding of how vocal tract dimensions vary among different types of loud voice productions has not yet been fully formed. This study aims to expand the existing knowledge on the topic.

Methods

Three trained professional singers together practiced the vocal techniques underlying Opera and Kulning singing styles for one hour and, afterwards, phonated using these techniques on vowel [iː] at pitch C5 (523 Hz), while their vocal tracts were scanned via MRI. One of the participants also produced the samples in the Edge vocal mode using [ɛː]. Several dimensional vocal tract measurements were calculated from the MRIs. Spectral analysis was conducted on the filtered audio recorded during the MRI.

Results

The Operatic technique demonstrated a lower larynx, a larger tongue−palate distance, and larger epilaryngeal and pharyngeal tube diameters compared to Kulning. Edge showed the highest laryngeal position, narrowest pharynx and epilarynx tubes, and the least forward-tilted larynx out of the styles studied. The spectra of Opera and Kulning showed a dominant first harmonic, while in Edge, the second harmonic was the strongest.

Conclusions

The results shed light on the magnitude of vocal tract changes necessary for genre-typical vocal projection. This information can be pedagogically helpful.

This study follows the framework set by the strand of corpusstudies aimed at investigating and unveiling the role of prolongationsas linguistic elements by comparing their use in differentlanguages, ranging from Germanic languages (Swedish,American English, German) to Tok Pisin, Chinese Mandarin,Hungarian and Hebrew, and provides evidence on the use ofprolongation in a Romance language, namely Italian. Theanalysis is conducted on different speech styles, i.e., descriptiveinformal dialogic speech as well as informative monologicspeech, and concerns the distributional characterisations of prolongationphenomena, their segmental and durational traits alsoconsidering the comparison with another type of voiced speechmanagement phenomena, that is non-verbal vocalisations. Themain results show that in the considered Italian data speakersuse prolongations more frequently than non-verbal vocalisationsand the latter are generally longer, which argues for thefact that these two voiced phenomena are differently involvedin speech management. Then, the distributional and segmentalfeatures of prolongations in Italian as compared to otherlanguages support the idea that prolongations, as linguistic elements,are subjected, to a certain extent, to the phonotacticconstraints of languages.

Kulning is a Swedish cattle call singing style with an almost mythical status inSwedish folklore. In previous studiestwo of the authors (RE, AM) studied kulning produced by a kulning singer (FP) in both indoor and outdoor settings. In this paper we report kulning as produced by a second singer (the third author, KD), recorded outdoors in a forest setting, with simultaneous recordings at 1, 11 and 22 meters. The results of amplitude, FFT and LPC analyses reported, and compared to theearlier studies reported in Eklund, McAllister and Pehrson (2013) and McAllister and Eklund (2015).

Mänskligt, spontalt producerat talspråk kännetecknas av att inte vara helt ”flytande”. Jag sätter ordet inom citationstecken eftersom det råder delade meningar om huruvida ”oflyt” i själva verket underlättar såväl talproduktion som talperception. Den vanligaste termen för detta är disfluenser, men även denna term är inte helt etablerad. En annan sak att hålla iminne är att den alternativa stavningen dysfluenser förekommer, speciellt engelskspråkig litteratur.

Disfluenser har studerats i över ett sekel, och en introduktion följer nedan. Denna artikel redovisar resultaten från en unik fMRIstudie av den mest ”speciella” av de olika disfluenstyperna, det som ofta(st) benämns ”fyllda pauser”, som (i svenska) ”eh” eller ”öh”. Notera att även denna term inte är etablerad.

In the project Melody in Human–Cat Communication (Meowsic) we are using established phonetic methods to collect, annotate, pre-process and analyse domestic cat–human vocal communication. This article describes these methods, and also presents results of meow vocalisations in four different mental states showing variation in fundamental frequency (f0).

This paper describes a unique singing mode, tentatively labeled “polyphonic overtone singing”. In overtone singingthe vocal harmonics of a stabile fundamental frequency are filtered by the singer in such a way that specific upper harmonics are amplified, and heard clearly, as a second musical voice. In the “throat singing” of Tuva (Mongolia) moving overtones usually occur over astable drone. In polyphonic overtone singing not only the pitch of the overtonesare changed and moving, but also the fundamental which results in two-voice singing.

Following the successes of the Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech workshop in Berkeley (1999) and the DiSS workshops in Edinburgh (2001), Göteborg (2003), Aix-en-Provence (2005), Tokyo (2010), Stockholm (2013), Edinburgh (2015) and Stockholm (2017), we are proud to announce DiSS 2019, to be held at the ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, in September 2019. The workshop is a satellite event of INTERSPEECH 2019.

What is most often called disfluency– i.e. pauses, hesitations, prolongations, truncations, repetitions, self‑repairs and similar – in normal spontaneous speech presents challenges for researchers in many different fields, ranging from speech production and perception in psychology, to conversational analysis and automatic speech recognition in speech technology.

DiSS 2019 will allow an opportunity for researchers from diverse backgrounds to present their research findings, to discuss common interests, to identify future directions and to establish new research collaborations. DiSS 2019 will be a two-day international workshop with an additional special day on (Dis)Fluency in Children’s Speech. All accepted papers will be published.