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Morpho-phonetics: A Framework for Studying Speech and Its Evolution
Get PDFSupervisor:
Prof. Dr. Steven MORAN
Co-Advisors:
Prof. Dr. Christoph ZOLLIKOFER
Dr. Marcia PONCE DE LEÓN
Jury:
Prof. Dr. Steven MORAN
Prof. Dr. Klaus ZUBERBÜHLER
Dr. François PELLEGRINO
Prof. Dr. Dan DEDIU
Date of defense: 04.07.2025
No de thèse : 3204La diversité linguistique résulte d’une interaction complexe de forces biologiques, culturelles et environnementales qui façonnent les systèmes acoustiques, phonologiques, lexicaux et grammaticaux des langues du monde. Cette thèse explore la façon dont cette diversité se propage de la variation interindividuelle de la morphologie du conduit vocal aux différences acoustiques systématiques entre les populations et les langues.
En me concentrant sur les systèmes vocaliques, je développe et applique un nouveau modèle appelé morpho-phonétique – intégrant l’analyse morphométrique géométrique de l’articulation de la parole avec un IRM en temps réel et l’analyse acoustique synchronisée – pour examiner comment les différences anatomiques dans le conduit vocal donnent lieu à des stratégies articulatoires distinctes et à des signatures acoustiques cohérentes. Ces connaissances s’étendent à des phénomènes vocaux tels que la coarticulation, offrant de nouveaux outils pour étudier la variation continue dans la parole connectée et montrant que le contraste phonétique est maintenu par un positionnement articulatoire relatif plutôt qu’absolu.
En passant des individus aux populations, j’applique ensuite des modèles évolutifs à des ensembles de données vocales à grande échelle, découvrant des schémas d’isolement par la distance (IBD) dans l’acoustique des voyelles qui reflètent des processus de dérive semblables à une divergence phonétique graduelle. Ceci soutient un modèle d’évolution de type neutre de l’acoustique dans la langue parlée, où la distance géographique influence la différenciation acoustique. Il est important de noter que cette dynamique ne se limite pas à l’homme: des analyses parallèles du chant des oiseaux du pinson d’Eurasie révèlent des modèles IBD et neutres étonnamment similaires, ce qui suggère que la parole et le chant des oiseaux peuvent être façonnés par des processus comparables au niveau populationnel. Ces résultats fournissent un modèle nul biologiquement fondé de l’évolution des traits acoustiques, qui permet aux changements non neutres ou d’origine culturelle d’être testés.
Enfin, je démontre que les caractéristiques acoustiques peuvent conserver des signaux historiques sur des échelles de temps très longues, dépassant potentielle- ment la limite de 8,000 à 10,000 ans de la méthode comparative. Le regroupement de l’acoustique des voyelles basé sur la similarité permet de retrouver des relations généalogiques connues entre les familles de langues, ce qui indique que la divergence phonétique graduelle peut constituer un outil puissant et sous-utilisé en linguistique historique. Ce travail propose une nouvelle approche de la diversification des langues fondée sur l’analyse acoustique, qui permet de mieux comprendre à la fois l’évolution des langues et les mécanismes qui maintiennent leur diversité au fil du temps.
ABSTRACT
Linguistic diversity arises from a complex interplay of biological, cultural, and environmental forces that shape the acoustic, phonological, lexical, and grammatical systems of the world’s languages. In this dissertation I explore how acoustic diversity propagates from interindividual variation in vocal tract morphology to systematic acoustic differences across populations and languages. Focusing on vowel systems, I develop and apply a novel framework termed morpho-phonetics – which integrates geometric morphometric analysis of speech articulation with real-time MRI and synchronized acoustic analysis – to examine how anatomical differences in the vocal tract give rise to distinct articulatory strategies and consistent acoustic signatures. These insights extend to speech phenomena such as coarticulation, offering new tools to investigate continuous variation in connected speech and showing that phonetic contrast is maintained through relative, rather than absolute, articulatory positioning.
Scaling from individuals to populations, I then apply evolutionary models to large-scale speech datasets, uncovering isolation-by-distance (IBD) patterns in vowel acoustics that mirror drift-like processes of gradual divergence. This supports a model of neutral-like evolution of acoustics in spoken language, where geographic distance influences acoustic differentiation. Importantly, these dynamics are not limited to humans: parallel analyses of Eurasian chaffinch birdsong reveal strikingly similar IBD and neutral-like patterns, suggesting that both speech and birdsong may be shaped by comparable population-level processes. These findings provide a biologically grounded null model of acoustic trait evolution, against which non-neutral or culturally driven changes can be tested.
Finally, I demonstrate how acoustic features may retain historical signals over deep timescales, potentially exceeding the 8–10k-year limit of the comparative method. Similarity-based clustering of vowel acoustics recovers known genealog- ical relationships between language families, indicating that gradual phonetic divergence may serve as a powerful, underutilized tool in historical linguistics. This work proposes a new approach to language diversification rooted in acoustic analysis, offering insights into both the evolution of language and the mechanismsthat maintain its diversity over time
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
Author Under Sail The Imagination of Jack London, 1893-1902
No full textIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Spirit Truth -- 2. From Absorption to Theatricality and Back Again -- 3. "I Will Build a New Present" -- 4. Sons as Authors -- 5. Fathers as Publishers -- 6. The Daughter as Author -- 7. Lovers as Authors -- 8. At Sea with the Family -- 9. Yellow News, Yellow Stories -- 10. The Return Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About Jay WilliamsIn Author Under Sail, Jay Williams offers the first complete literary biography of Jack London as a professional writer engaged in the labor of writing. It examines the authorial imagination in London's work, the use of imagination in both his fiction and nonfiction, and the ways he defined imagination in the creative process in his business dealings with his publishers, editors, and agents. In this first volume of a two-volume biography, Williams traverses the years 1893 to 1902, from London's "Story of a Typhoon" to The People of the Abyss. The Jack London who emerges in the pages of Author Under Sail is a writer whose partnership with publishers, most notably his productive alliance with George Brett of Macmillan, was one of the most formative in American literary history. London pioneered many author models during the heyday of realism and naturalism, blurring the boundaries of these popular genres by focusing on absorption and theatricality and the representation of the seen and unseen. London created an impassioned, sincere, and extremely personal realism unlike that of other American writers of the time. Author Under Sail is a literary tour de force that reveals the full range of London as writer, creative citizen, and entrepreneur at the same time it sheds light on the maverick side of machine-age literature.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
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