Ouch! Commonalties found in pain vocalizations and interjections across cultures

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12, 2024 – There are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, each offering unique ways to express human emotion. But do certain emotions show regularities in their vocal expression across languages?

In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, an interdisciplinary team of linguists and bioacousticians led by Maïa Ponsonnet, Katarzyna Pisanski, and Christophe Coupé explored this by comparing expressive interjections (like “wow!”) to nonlinguistic vocalizations (like screams and cries) across the globe.

Pisanski explained how studying cries, screams, and laughter can shed light on the origins of speech.

“Why did we humans start to speak, and other primates didn’t? We all produce laughter, and hundreds of species produce playlike vocalizations,” said Ponsonnet. “Yet we are the only species that evolved spoken language. Looking at these commonalities across species can help us understand where humans diverged and how.

“Critically, by comparing interjections to vocalizations expressing the same emotions, we can test whether the acoustic patterns we observe in interjections can be traced back to vocalizations.”

The researchers analyzed vowels in interjections from 131 languages, comparing them with nearly 500 vowels from vocalizations produced in joyful, painful, or disgusting contexts.

They predicted that the vocalizations’ acoustic forms reflect their adaptive or social functions. “We believe that many vocal expressions have a function. For example, babies’ cries tend to be loud and harsh, evolving to annoy parents enough to stop the aversive signal. We expect vocal expressions of pain, disgust, and joy to reflect their functions too,” said Pisanski.

The researchers found evidence to support this for vocalizations: Each of the three emotions yielded consistent and distinct vowel signatures across cultures. Pain interjections also featured similar open vowels, such as “a,” and wide falling diphthongs, such as “ai” in “Ayyy!” and “aw” in “Ouch!” However, for disgusted and joyful emotions, in contrast to vocalizations, the interjections lacked regularities across cultures. The researchers expressed surprise at this latter finding.

The team aims to expand this research across more cultures and emotions to better understand how widespread vocal expressions arise and where they come from.

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The article “Vowel signatures in emotional interjections and nonlinguistic vocalizations expressing pain, disgust and joy across languages” is authored by Maïa Ponsonnet, Christophe Coupé, François Pellegrino, Garcia Arasco Aitana, and Katarzyna Pisanski. It will appear in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America on Nov. 12, 2024 (DOI: 10.1121/10.0032454). After that date, it can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0032454.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) is published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America. Since 1929, the journal has been the leading source of theoretical and experimental research results in the broad interdisciplinary subject of sound. JASA serves physical scientists, life scientists, engineers, psychologists, physiologists, architects, musicians, and speech communication specialists. See https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa.

ABOUT ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

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