Research

Cross-species Phonetics

Description

Humans often say sentences that they have never said before, but they are not the only species with unstereotyped vocalizations. Here we are studying whether other animals with unstereotyped vocalizations, like the budgerigar, follow similar patterns to human speech.

Cooperation Partner

  • Chris Sturdy, University of Alberta, Canada
  • Michael Pucher
  • Lorenz Gutscher
Budgerigar being recorded with a shotgun microphone. Image from: Gutscher, L., Pucher, M., Lozo, C., Hoeschele, M., & Mann, D. C. (2019). Statistical parametric synthesis of budgerigar songs, (September), 127–131.
Based on phonetic descriptions of natural budgerigar vocalizations (top), we were able to generate artificial budgerigar vocalizations (middle and bottom) that we are now using to test budgerigar perception of grammar. Image from: Gutscher, L., Pucher, M., Lozo, C., Hoeschele, M., & Mann, D. C. (2019). Statistical parametric synthesis of budgerigar songs, (September), 127–131.

Publications

Campbell, K.A., Hoeschele, M., Mann, D., Congdon, J.V., Scully, E.N., Mischler, S.K., Montenegro, C., Service, W.D., & Sturdy, C.B. (2023). Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) discriminate between naturally-ordered and scramble-ordered chick-a-dee calls and individual preference is related to rate of learning. Behavioural Processes, 206, 104842.

Hoeschele, M., Wagner, B, & Mann, D.C. (2022). Lessons learned in animal acoustic cognition through comparisons with humans. Animal Cognition –25th anniversary special issue, 26, 97-116.

Mann, D., Fitch, W.T., Tu, H. & Hoeschele, M. (2021). Universal principles underlying segmental structures in parrot song and human speech. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 776.

Mann, D. & Hoeschele, M. (2020). Segmental units in non-human animal vocalization as a window into meaning, structure, and the evolution of language. Animal Behavior and Cognition – special issue on “Communication in Nonhumans” 7(2), 151-158.

Gutscher, L., Pucher, M., Lozo, C., Hoeschele, M., Mann, D.C. (2019) Statistical parametric synthesis of budgerigar songs. Proceedings of the 10th Speech synthesis workshop, 10.21437/SSW.2019-23. 

Phonetics
Machine Learning

Team