Fitch W Tecumseh
Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2025 Apr 3;380(1923):20240024. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2024.0024.
The recognition that nonlinear phenomena, including subharmonics, bifurcations and deterministic chaos, are present in human and animal vocalizations is a relatively recent one. I give a brief history of this revolution in our understanding of the voice, based on interviews with some of the key players and personal experience. Most of the key concepts and mathematical principles of nonlinear dynamics were already well worked out in the early 1980s. In the early 1990s, physicist Hanspeter Herzel and colleagues in Berlin recognized that these principles are applicable to the human voice, initially to baby cries. The physics and physiology underlying many of these nonlinear phenomena had remained mysterious up until then. This insight was later generalized to animal vocalizations. Nonlinear phenomena play a relatively peripheral role in most human vocal communication but are a common feature of many animal vocalizations. The broad recognition of the existence of nonlinear vocalizations, and the quantitative study of their production and perception, has now fuelled important and exciting advances in our understanding of animal communication. I concentrate on how the core concepts came into focus, and on their initial application to an ever-wider circle of call types and species, and end with a brief prospectus for the future.This article is part of the theme issue 'Nonlinear phenomena in vertebrate vocalizations: mechanisms and communicative functions'.
人们认识到包括次谐波、分岔和确定性混沌在内的非线性现象存在于人类和动物的发声中，这是相对较新的认识。基于对一些关键人物的访谈和个人经历，我简要介绍一下这场我们对声音理解的革命的历史。非线性动力学的大多数关键概念和数学原理在20世纪80年代初就已经得到了充分的阐述。20世纪90年代初，柏林的物理学家汉斯彼得·赫泽尔及其同事认识到这些原理适用于人类声音，最初是婴儿哭声。在此之前，许多这些非线性现象背后的物理和生理学一直是个谜。这一见解后来被推广到动物发声。非线性现象在大多数人类语音交流中起着相对次要的作用，但却是许多动物发声的一个共同特征。对非线性发声存在的广泛认识以及对其产生和感知的定量研究，现在推动了我们对动物交流理解的重要且令人兴奋的进展。我专注于核心概念是如何成为焦点的，以及它们最初是如何应用于越来越广泛的叫声类型和物种的，并以对未来的简要展望作为结尾。本文是主题特刊“脊椎动物发声中的非线性现象：机制与交流功能”的一部分。
