13.07.2023

Aerosols, airflow, and more: Examining the interaction of speech and the physical environment

Colloquium by Prof. Dr. Caleb Everett

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Time: Thursday, 13^th July 2023 at 1pm (sharp)

Location: Rümelinstraße 23, Room 602 or via Zoom

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Steven Moran and Axel Erkström

Title: Aerosols, airflow, and more: Examining the interaction of speech and the physical environment

Abstract: 

In this talk I describe ongoing efforts to better understand the interaction of spoken languages and their physical environments. First, I discuss the hypothesis that environments with very dry air place subtle pressures on how languages evolve, given the demonstrable effects of desiccation on the functioning of the vocal cords. This discussion focuses on recent experimental research suggesting that the inhalation of dry air under natural conditions impacts the functioning of the vocal cords, including new research demonstrating that dry environments yield higher jitter rates of vocal cord vibration in natural speech. It is suggested that such research can offer a way forward in relevant debates, moving beyond discussions of correlations between linguistic and non-linguistic variables. The second part of the talk focuses on the ways speech can affect the immediate physical environment. I discuss the speech-based production of airflow and aerosol particles that are buoyant in ambient air, based on some of the results in the literature. Most critically, I discuss a novel method developed by myself and colleagues to capture aerosol, airflow, and acoustic data simultaneously. This method captures airflow data via a pneumotachograph and aerosol data via an electrical particle impactor. Given the capabilities of the electrical particle impactor, which has not previously been used to analyze speech-based aerosols, the method allows for the detection of aerosol particles at temporal and physical resolutions exceeding those evident in the literature, even enabling the isolation of the role of individual sound types in the production of aerosols. I discuss how this approach could ultimately yield data that are relevant to airborne disease transmission and offer preliminary results that illustrate such relevance. The results described in this talk illustrate in new ways the unseen and unheard ways in which spoken languages interact with their physical environments.

We welcome you all to join us in-person or via Zoom.