Cat phoneme collection
Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2021 3:12 pm
Odd question I suppose but would anyone like to help me in collecting cat sounds/phonemes? If you are a cat owner or interact with felines on the regular, just let me know what types of calls they make and an approximation in human phonetic terms even if they are vague.
For example, even putting aside purrs, I've heard several cats make trills of some kind (maybe /r:/), nasal sounds with both closed and open mouths (at least /m/ and /ŋ/, maybe others), a non-trilled rhotic (/ɾ/?), something acoustically like /w/ though probably in practice more like /ɰ/, a few different vowels (about /i e a ə u o/ and some diphthongs), various hisses/fricatives at least /f s ʃ x/, and a stop on the end of their excited/hunting calls I'm tentatively marking as /k/. I might not include the last one since it might be more like a phone used in interjections but not otherwise in the "language". For types of calls/syllables, I've observed in my own cats:
- A lone vowel or diphthong
- Any consonant (except /k/) followed by a vowel or diphthong
- A nasal followed by a trill, optionally followed by a vowel/diphthong
- A fricative or series of such
- A lone trill
- /ek/, often repeated (hunting/excitement call)
- More rarely, other vowel-ended syllables with -k tacked on
Tones are also important in how cats communicate but I'm fairly certain that is an aspect that is negotiated between the cat(s) and human(s) communicating. So I'm only looking specifically at what kinds of phones people's cats use, especially if they don't conform to the above that I've observed. This is for a current conlang project, but it's also not any serious study. I once had a cat that I swear responded to my mom telling her it was raining and she wouldn't want to go out with a perfect "I understand..." so feel free to let me know that one of your cats has spoken perfect English/Swahili/Mandarin or the such
For example, even putting aside purrs, I've heard several cats make trills of some kind (maybe /r:/), nasal sounds with both closed and open mouths (at least /m/ and /ŋ/, maybe others), a non-trilled rhotic (/ɾ/?), something acoustically like /w/ though probably in practice more like /ɰ/, a few different vowels (about /i e a ə u o/ and some diphthongs), various hisses/fricatives at least /f s ʃ x/, and a stop on the end of their excited/hunting calls I'm tentatively marking as /k/. I might not include the last one since it might be more like a phone used in interjections but not otherwise in the "language". For types of calls/syllables, I've observed in my own cats:
- A lone vowel or diphthong
- Any consonant (except /k/) followed by a vowel or diphthong
- A nasal followed by a trill, optionally followed by a vowel/diphthong
- A fricative or series of such
- A lone trill
- /ek/, often repeated (hunting/excitement call)
- More rarely, other vowel-ended syllables with -k tacked on
Tones are also important in how cats communicate but I'm fairly certain that is an aspect that is negotiated between the cat(s) and human(s) communicating. So I'm only looking specifically at what kinds of phones people's cats use, especially if they don't conform to the above that I've observed. This is for a current conlang project, but it's also not any serious study. I once had a cat that I swear responded to my mom telling her it was raining and she wouldn't want to go out with a perfect "I understand..." so feel free to let me know that one of your cats has spoken perfect English/Swahili/Mandarin or the such