Phonology and Phonetics of Whistled Speech

Abstract

It was mentioned before that the techniques of whistling impose so many constraints and restrictions upon the articulation of speech sounds as they are usually performed in normal communication that a one-to-one correspondence between the sounds of speech and whistled signals could hardly be expected. In the case of the latter there occurs an important reduction in the number of significant features, and with them vanish many of the phonological oppositions that operate and we have come to expect in Spanish, French, etc. Particularly obvious and important are the losses resulting from the lack of regular voiced/voiceless oppositions of spoken consonants. These are clearly unavoidable in view of the fact that a voiceless whistle is a contradiction in terms, reducing as it does to a feeble fricative or better whispered noise useless for distant communication. Also the feature of nasality cannot play any role as such since the lowering of the velum involved in the nasalization of speech sounds has no effect on the timbre of a whistle which in all cases remains an overtoneless sound. It results only in a decrease of air pressure in the mouth with a concomitant reduction of loudness often amounting to total silence and no other observable acoustic effect.