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Whistled languages of the world: Phonetic, phonological, and neurocognitive Insights into an alternative speech modality
Organizers:
Michela Russo (CNRS SFL & Université Lyon)
Sophia Katsiouris (Université Paris 8 & CNRS SFL)
Description:
Whistled languages offer a natural laboratory for studying how human speech can be acoustically reduced yet remain intelligible. This interdisciplinary workshop explores their phonetic, phonological, and neurocognitive dimensions across the world—from Greek Sfyria to Silbo Gomero and Tashlhiyt Berber. By integrating acoustic analysis, typology, and recent EEG and behavioral findings, the meeting investigates how left- and right-hemispheric processes cooperate in decoding melodic speech signals. Bringing together researchers in laboratory phonology, cognitive neuroscience, and music perception, this event aims to advance
our understanding of how linguistic structure adapts to an alternative auditory modality.
Date:
Monday, 29 June 2026 (full day)
Location:
Montréal, Québec, Canada (LabPhon20: June 26–28, 2026).
Keynote speakers (2 x 1 hour):
- Rachid Ridouane (LPP, CNRS Paris, in collaboration with Julien Meyer, GIPSA-Lab, Grenoble)
Whistled speech in Tashlhiyt: Perspectives on phonetic and phonological structure - Fanny Meunier (BCL, CNRS, Nice)
From Music to Speech: The Impact of Musical Training on the Perception of Whistled Speech
Scope:
Whistled languages constitute a remarkable natural experiment in speech reduction and adaptation. By transposing segmental and prosodic cues into a narrow-band acoustic signal (roughly 0.9–4 kHz), they reveal how linguistic structure can remain intelligible under extreme physical constraints. Found across diverse linguistic families (e.g., Greek sfyria, Spanish Silbo Gomero, Tashlhiyt Berber, Turkish Kuşköy, Mazatec Oaxaca), whistled systems provide an exceptional window into phonetic encoding, phonological abstraction, and hemispheric specialization / brain lateralization in speech processing.
Building on recent advances in experimental phonetics and neuro-phonology, the workshop aims to bring together phonetic, phonological, and neurolinguistic perspectives on whistled languages, comparing tonal and non-tonal systems and exploring their implications for models of speech perception, hemispheric cooperation, and phonological representation.
Call for papers:
We welcome submissions on (non-exhaustive list):
- Typology of whistled languages: Tonal vs non-tonal systems
- Acoustic/phonetic encoding (e.g., formant-to-harmonic mapping, segmental loci)
- Production, aerodynamics, and articulatory strategies in whistling
- Perceptual categorization, intelligibility, learning, and expertise effects
- Speech–music interface (including musical training advantages)
- Neurocognitive/neurolinguistic approaches (EEG/MEG/fMRI; hemispheric specialization)
- Documentation, endangerment, revitalization, corpora, tools, and field methods
- The program will be balanced across phonetics, phonology, and cognitive/neuro approaches.
Contributed talks: 30 minutes total (recommended: 20 min talk + 10 min discussion)
Panel discussion uniting phonologists, phoneticians, and neuroscientists on “How hemispheric specialization adapts to alternative speech codes.”
Submission guidelines
- Extended abstract: max. 2 pages, including references (PDF)
- Please include: title, research question(s), data/methods, main results, and key references.
- Submission email: mrusso@univ-paris8.fr
Important dates
- Abstract deadline: 16 March 2026
- Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2026
Questions
For queries about fit, accessibility, or scheduling constraints, contact the organizers: