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Sesquipedalian #9

the SESQUIPEDALIAN 				       Volume V,  No. 9
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'More than you ever wanted to know'		       December 8, 1994


		     DOES THE SHEEP SAY 'MAA' OR 'BAA'
   	      Preliminaries to a theory of ungulate phonetics
			     by Anne Elk (Ms)

0. Introduction
	When asked to characterize the typical utterance of the
domestic sheep (Ovis aries), the linguistically untutored speaker of
an Indo-European language will invariably give one of the responses in
(1): 
	(1) a. Maaaaa.
	    b. Baaaaa.
The more astute informant, or the informant more familiar with the
species in question, may offer the opinion that both of the utterances
in (1) are possible.  The phonetician, however, is compelled to ask
him- or herself: Is there any acoustic evidence to confirm or deny the
assertion that this is the correct transcription of the utterances in
question?
	There are several possible avenues to pursue.  Palatograms
would no doubt be an invaluable tool, but the technical problems
involved in persuading a sheep to submit to this procedure are
well-nigh insurmountable.  However, a more non-invasive alternative is
available: the spectrogram.  It is quite simple for the dedicated
investigator, armed with nothing more than a portable tape recorder,
to collect many examples of the vocalization of Ovis aries in a short
trip to any farm.  Then, one must merely clean one's shoes and return
to the lab to begin to answer this question which has vexed the
zoologically sophisticated phonetician, no doubt for as long as sheep
have been part of the community life of Homo sapiens sapiens.
1. The Consonant System
	Examine, to start, Figure 1.  The portion approximately
between the marks labelled A and B constitute a spectrogram of a sheep
vocalization which was reported to be 'Maaa' by four separate
informants, including the author.(1) Note the difference in formant
structure between the section from A' to B and the section from B to
C.  The first section has the typical locus of a bilabial transition.
We hypothesize that this constitutes the long [m] sound at the
beginning of this utterance.  The striations are much darker and thus
of much greater amplitude than the usual spectrogram of a human nasal
consonant, which typically consists of fairly faint striations at
about 250, 1200, 3250 Hz (for example, see Ladefoged 1985, p. 183).
However, one must of course keep in mind the important differences
between human and ovine vocal tract anatomy.  Acoustic criteria
evaluated solely with respect to the standard for Homo sapiens sapiens
would probably mislead us at this point.  The prognathous snout of the
sheep, and the resulting much larger nasal cavity, no doubt account
for the much greater amplitude of nasal resonance.
	We conclude from this section that the native perception that
the sheep says 'Maaa' is indeed correct for at least some instances of
ovine vocalization.
	Next, let us turn to Figure 2, which consists of the
spectrogram of two utterances which were reported as 'Baaa' by the
same four native English-speaking informants, including the author.
Examine the second of the two, between the marks labelled A and B.(2) 
Note that this spectrogram shows the same formant structure at the
beginning which we interpreted as a long [m].  This spectrogram does
seem to show a brief bilabial transition at the beginning.  However,
it appears to only occur in F2, as is typical of [p] rather than [b].
Also note that there are no voicing striations where we would expect
if this were [b].  How, then, do we explain the reports of our
informants?  We hypothesize that in fact, the consonant that the sheep
uses in this utterance is a voiceless, unaspirated bilabial.  As is
well known, because of the manner in which voicing and aspiration
correlate in English, native English speakers will hear an unaspirated
voiceless stop as the corresponding voiced stop, which is unaspirated
in English.
2. The Vowel System
	The vowels in the utterances in Figures 1 and 2 both show a
fairly high F1, as is typical of a low vowel.  F2 and F3 are fairly
low, as is typical of a back vowel.  However, three highly trained
linguists from a distinguished American university, listening to this
tape, felt that they would not be likely to transcribe this sound as a
back vowel.  How do we account, again, for this difference in
perceptual impression and acoustic evidence?  Recall that lip rounding
has the same effect as backing in a vowel; that is, it lowers F2 and
F3.  Thus this formant structure would also be compatible with a
rounded vowel.  But do sheep round their lips?  More anatomical study
is needed in this area, but visual inspection leads one to tentatively
conclude that they do not.  However, recall that the effect of lip
rounding on formant structure results from the fact that lip rounding
slightly lengthens the vocal tract.  Again it would seem that we must
be careful to consider the difference in human and ovine vocal tract
anatomy.  Although sheep do not round their lips, they do have a much
longer vocal tract than that of Homo sapiens sapiens.  It seems
reasonable to assume that the inherently longer vocal tract results in
the same acoustic phenomena in the vowel of the sheep as the
transitorily lengthened vocal tract caused by lip rounding in the
human being.
3. Considerations for futher study
	Clearly an enormous amount of research is left to be done in
this field.  One interesting avenue would be to examine the idiophones
for sheep utterances in non-Indo-European languages-- in particular,
languages which distinguish aspiration in voiceless bilabial stops.
And of course, there remains an enormous number of other ungulates to
consider.  For the interest of our readers, we include in Figures 4-6
spectrograms of the utterances of four more ungulates: the pig (Sus
scrofa), the cow (Bos taurus), the horse (Equus caballus), and the
goat (Capra hircus).  We will not discuss these except to point out
the interesting vowel formant structure in Figure 4, the cow.  The
vowel appears to have four very strong formants, compared to the more
usual three that we are led to expect from our study of human
phonetics.  We note that the cow also has four stomachs.  More than
coincidence? 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We would like to thank our consultant in syntax,
Sieglinde Aufgebautershlagenwerker, and our technical assistant Igor.

REFERENCES: 
Chomsky, N. 'Lectures in Government and Binding.' Foris: Dordrecht,
1981.

Ladefoged, P. 'A Course in Phonetics' (second edition) New York:
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanich, 1982.

(1) The higher frequencies toward the end of this section constitute
the overlapping utterance of a lamb, whcih is of much higher pitch, as
seems to be typical of the young of many mammals.
(2) The gap near the beginning of the first utterance is so far
unexplained.  Our syntactic consulant has suggested that it might
possibly be the PRO, but we leave the investigation of the
distribution of empty categories in Ovis aries to other, more
appropriate hands.
(3) Of course, if we are to assert a correlation between number of
stomachs and number of formants, we will have some problem with the
fact that humans (with the possible exception of Roseanne Barr) are
only known to have one stomach, while their vowels have three
formants.  Our syntactic consultant points out that we could allow our
theory to be completely general by positing that Homo sapiens sapiens
in fact has two abstract stomachs-- the 'Empty Stomachs,' so to speak,
similar to the empty categories proposed in Chomsky (1981).

       |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |		 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
-----------------------------		-----------------------------
 
             ,     |;  |;|:||		    ,,  ,
       ,     ;    ,;  ;|||||;             ,;||;:||::;|:;:::|||||;||||
     ;:||;|::||||;|||||||::||           ; :||||||||:|||||||||||;:;|||
  :,||||||||||||::||||;||:;:|             ;:||||||||||||::|||||||:||;
   :|  ""|:;  |||||||||;|||:|             ': |||||||""'''   "':||||;
  A   A'      B           C               A                         B
(Figure 1)				(Figure 2)

 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |		 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
-----------------------------		-----------------------------
             ';              
         ,   |,       ,;' ,
    |   ,;,:||||,:||||||,:;|,		 ':|' "
    |, :||||';||;, :||||||,;|		:;':  ,   ,   ,,;,
    |.,||;|, '":  |||"' |:;,,            ":||||||||:|||||::||:|:,; ;|
       :|:; |:;,  :;: ,;:||'              ";||||||||||||||||||||;:.: :
(Figure 3-- Sus scrofa)			(Figure 4-- Bos taurus)

 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |		 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 
-----------------------------		-----------------------------

            ,:    ;:: .: :,                     ,  ;,,
            :; , ':"' ';:''                     |  ||:,;::: , , ;  ,
           :||||||' : ';:|                       :,;|||:||"    ":  
           |||||||||||||||:;                       |||||||;     ;
           "     '""  "   ""			,;"  "|:  ':  '
(Figure 5-- Equus Caballus)		(Figure 6-- Capra hircus)
 
Ms. Elk, a leading dinosaur theoretician, is currently on a visiting
lectureship in Phonetics at the University of Going a Bit Red in
Helsinki. 

		     ^\^\^\ LOOK WHO'S TALKING /^/^/^

-- Rachel Nordlinger's MA thesis, 'A Grammar of Wambaya,' will be
published in book form next year by Pacific Linguistics.  Purchase of
copies will be mandatory.

 	           ^/^/^/ LINGUISTICS COLLOQUIUM \^\^\^

In place of the colloquium this week, the Linguistics Department will
be having its departmental planning meeting at 3:30 pm in Cordura 100.
All department members are invited to attend and contribute. (See
preceeding announcement for details)

		      ^/^/^/ CALL FOR PAPERS \^\^\^

-- FLSM-VI: The Sixth Annual Meeting of the Formal Linguistics Society
of Mid-America will be hosted by the Indiana University Linguistics
Club at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana on May 19-21, 1995.
Abstracts are invited for 20-minute talks in all areas of formal
linguistics (syntax, phonology, morphology, semantics,
psycholinguistics, etc). Selected papers presented will be published
in the FLSM VI proceedings, published by the IULC. Please submit 10
copies of a one-page anonymous abstract suitable for reproduction (an
additional page with examples and references may be included). Use
fonts no smaller than 12 pts. Authors should identify themselves on a
separate 3" x 5" index card. The card should contain the following
information: title of paper, name of author, address/affiliation,
electronic mail address, phone number.  Send abstracts to
       FLSM 6 Committee
       Indiana University Linguistics Club
       Department of Linguistics
       322 Memorial Hall
       Indiana University
       Bloomington, Indiana   47405
Address inquiries electronically to flsm1995@indiana.edu or Elizabeth
Purnell (elpurnel@silver.ucs.indiana.edu).  ABSTRACTS MUST BE RECEIVED
BY JANUARY 31, 1995. 

-- CELTIC STUDIES: The Seventeenth Annual University of California
Celtic Studies Conference will be held March 3-5, 1995, on the
Berkeley campus. Confirmed speakers so far include Professor Calvert
Watkins of Harvard University. As an added attraction, Berkeley will
be hosting the Medieval Association of the Pacific (MAP) Conference
the same weekend. (Contact Dan Melia for further details.) Submission
of abstracts is solicited on a wide variety of Celtic topics including
anthropology, archaeology, art, folklore, history, linguistics,
literature, and music. Abstracts should be one page in length; papers
should be no more than twenty minutes.  Abstracts should be received
by January 1, 1995.  Please send them to
	Professor Daniel Melia
	Celtic Studies Program
	c/o Scandinavian Department
	1314 Dwinelle Hall #2690
	University of California
	Berkeley, CA 94720

		    ^\^\^\ JOB ANNOUNCEMENTS /^/^/^

(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)

-- UNIVERSITY OF LILLE-III: The department of English at the
University of Lille 3, Lille, France, is urgently seeking to fill a
temporary position as lecturer in English phonetics, pending final
administrative approval. Teaching could start as early as January
1995, running through September 1995. The position may be renewed
through September 1996.  Preference will be given to candidates
holding a PhD in English or General Linguistics, though candidates who
have not yet finished their dissertation will also be considered.
Knowledge of French is useful, but not necessary.  Teaching duties
consist in teaching English phonetics to 1st and 2nd year students in
the English department. The teaching load is 6-7 hours a week, running
through May. Exams are in June and September.  Contact Philip Miller,
pmiller@ulb.ac.be, for further information.

(REDUNDANCY NOTICE: For fuller listings of these and other jobs, don't
forget to check the Jobs binder in the Greenberg Room, and the file
'jobslist.txt' on the CSLI directory /user/linguistics.)


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