Humans produce non-lexical vocal micro-events; both vocal and not, with realizations ranging from physiological noises to phonological vocal productions (interjections). (We term these 'vocal events' in this paper, though some are not voiced.) Note that, as opposed to the term 'vocalization' as commonly used, these are acoustic speech events accompanying, and indispensable for, efficient communication. During the dynamic process of face-to-face interaction, subjects spontaneously and continuously express their varying mental/cognitive and affective states, even outside talk turns. We characterize such vocal events with terms from fillers, through grunts and bursts, to interjections. We present an annotation and description of the vocal events in a realistic emotionally induced French corpus (Aubergé et al., 2006). Their impressionistic phonetic/prosodic description is given and globally analyzed (Vanpé, 2011). Categorization (Table 1) shows that most frequent are mouth noises where production requires simple articulatory control or vocalic interjections, and wherein duration and airflow vary greatly. Overall, 46% of vocal events use ingressive airflow (e.g. inspiration, clicks, articulator slackening). We characterize these events as a continuum from grunts through interjections with increasing prosodic control, which we then present in phylogenetic perspective (see also Eklund 2008). The continuum Jackendoff discussed (2002) as fossils of language evolution shares some of our vocal events, but he focuses on the symbolic level of the elements. Burling (2005) also discusses non vocal communication in a language evolution perspective, but focuses mainly on evolutionary factors (e.g. sexual selection). We expect study of vocal events to illuminate various aspects of language evolution, and indeed to reveal certain necessary conditions for language emergence. It should likewise relate to some current linguistic concerns. Ethologically; these events are essential for communication in modern humans. What is their role in non-human primate communication? What was it in the evolution of primate communication? Comparing our vocal event data with that addressing non-human primates will help clarify the possibilities.
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