Department of Linguistics

Dr. Jon T. Sakata (McGill University) will be presenting his work on prosodic parallels between birdsong and speech in this Wednesday Seminar. Further information is below. E-mail Nathan Dwyer for link.

Title of Talk: “Developmental and comparative analyses highlight prosodic parallels between birdsong and speech”

Abstract: “Numerous prosodic features of speech are more prevalent across languages than expected by chance, and such “universals” suggest potential biological contributions to the emergence of speech structures. Like speech, the songs of songbirds (birdsong) is learned during development and used to communicate with other individuals. Furthermore, some acoustic patterns within and between songbird species are highly prevalent and similar to speech universals. Here I discuss my research into the contributions of biological predispositions in learning and motor systems to the emergence of common acoustic patterns as well as our recent large-scale survey of acoustic patterns in across hundreds of passerine species (perching birds). These studies suggest potential biological contributions to the emergence of speech universals in humans and underscore how such patterns are shared across species.”

Bio: Dr. Jon T. Sakata is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). Dr. Sakata is the director of the Sakata Songbird Lab, which investigates the neural mechanisms underlying vocal learning, motor control, and social behavior in songbirds. Dr. Sakata has a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin.