The Secret Language Of Cats. Susanne Schötz
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CATS AND PHONETICS
I am a phonetician by profession. I do research and teach at Lund University, in the very south of Sweden. Phonetics, my area of expertise, studies the sounds of human speech. As part of my research, I ask the following questions: How are these sounds produced, and how do they differ from each other (acoustically or auditorily)? I analyze the spectral characteristics (how the sound energy is spread across all frequencies) as well as the prosody (the melody, rhythm and dynamics of speech) in different words, utterances, dialects and languages. Among the hazards of my professions is a tendency to listen more to how something is said than what is being said.
That is how it is with human speech and, as a cat fancier, it is no surprise that I began to listen to the phonetic properties of cat sounds as well. I started to ask myself what vowels were present in a meow. How does the pitch or melody change in the meows of my cats when they are asking me to play with them? And does the melody change in different situations or contexts, such as when they want to be let out into the garden or when they have hidden inside a closet and I accidentally closed the door?
I still remember how I first noticed that my cats meowed differently when they were asking for food at home and when they were in the carrier and on the way to the vet. The melody as well as the vowel sounds of the meows sounded completely different. How could that be? Can it be coincidence? Do cats vary their meows instinctively, or do they learn the different nuances of vowels and melodies and how to use them in different contexts or situations? Could it even be that cats have learned to deliberately use different sounds and their variations in different situations?
At that moment, my love of cats and science first came together. I started to record the various sounds that Donna, Rocky and Turbo made and analyzed them using phonetic methods—the same ones I normally use when I investigate human speech. Using my “phonetic ears” I listened closely to the sounds, tried to transcribe them using the symbols of the phonetic alphabet and investigated their different phonetic characteristics. In which high and low frequencies could my cats vary their meows? Which cat sounds are voiced and which are voiceless? Which vowels and consonants can cats produce, and how do they move their mouths—their tongues, lips and jaws—when they produce the different sounds?
I read a lot about the different cat sounds, primarily in scientific books and articles. I found that there was remarkably little phonetic research on cat sounds. I took it upon myself to change this.
CAT SOUNDS: AN OVERVIEW
The scientific investigation of cat sounds is, in itself, nothing new. Charles Darwin wrote about cat sounds. He recognized six or seven different vocalization (or sound) types and was especially interested in purring because it is produced during both inhalation and exhalation.
Marvin R. Clark (1895/2016) goes a step further in his book Pussy and Her Language. He refers to the work of the French natural scientist Alphonse Leon Grimaldi, who had ascertained that the vowels a, e, i, o and u can be used to form almost every word in the language of cats and that the liquid consonants l and r occur in the majority of all utterances. Other consonants, he argued, occur only rarely. If we follow Grimaldi, the language of cats consists of about 600 basic “words,” which are used to form all other “words.” We also learn from Clark’s book that the language of cats bears a strong resemblance to Chinese in that both have only a few words, but those words change meaning depending on pronunciation— especially in relation to the tone (intonation, melody) of the language. Both languages are therefore very pleasant to the ear, almost like music. Modern scientists do not take Grimaldi’s book all that seriously, though some of his descriptions can be accurate.
Mildred Moelk published the first (as far as I know) phonetic study of cat sounds in 1944. She listened very carefully to her own cats and organized their sounds into sixteen phonetic patterns divided into three main categories. She also used a phonetic alphabet to transcribe or write down the different sounds; purring, for example, is given as [ˈhrn-rhn-ˈhrn-rhn…] and meowing becomes [ˈmiɑou:ʔ]. Today, cat sounds are still often divided into the three main classes suggested by Moelk.
1. Sounds produced with a closed mouth, the murmurs (purring, trilling)
2. Sounds produced when the mouth is first opened and then gradually closed (meowing, howling, yowling)
3. Sounds produced with a mouth held tensely open in the same position (growling, snarling, hissing, spitting, chattering, chirping)
Moelk operated on the assumption that the various acoustic patterns in the sounds signaled different messages, for example acknowledgment, bewilderment, request, greeting, demand and complaint.
Jennifer Brown and her colleagues Buchwald, Johnson and Mikolich investigated the sounds of both adult cats and kittens. They found acoustic similarities in various sounds produced in similar behavioral situations, as well as differences in sounds produced in different situations.
Between the 1950s and the 1970s, there were also a number of studies of laboratory cats. Due to the laboratory setting, these studies involved the analysis of unnatural (probably often desperate) sounds that were recorded in the sterile atmosphere of the laboratories where the cats were caged and probably starved before the recording sessions. Luckily, there are now more case studies that were conducted under humane circumstances, often in the private homes of the cats. There are now many scientific studies of cat sounds stemming from behavioral research (ethology) and zoology, as well as an increasing number of linguistic and phonetic studies.
Though there are more recent studies, many descriptions of the sounds of cats continue to refer to Mildred Moelk, her three main categories and her sixteen different sound patterns. I, too, am guided by Moelk in this book and describe most of her sound patterns. On top of those, I also include sounds that were described in other works and sounds which I have recorded and analyzed in my own studies. The categories (sound patterns) are organized according to their phonetic traits or features. Because of the great number of different variations, I have decided to describe only sound patterns that I have personally observed in my own or other cats. I have also recorded the vast majority of these sounds myself and have analyzed them using phonetic methods. I would like to invite you to listen to them yourself and maybe to compare them to the sounds made by your own cat. You will find the relevant links to the individual video and sound examples on my website at http://meowsic.info/catvoc.
In the following pages I will give you a brief overview of the most common cat sounds. A few have two or more names. Books, articles and websites on the topic sometimes use one word and sometimes use another to describe the same sound. Meowing, for example, is also sometimes described as miaowing, and howling is often described as yowling. Because it is likely that these names are used for the same type of sounds, I included the most common name for each sound type first and then included other common terms within brackets. A few examples also include transcriptions using the International Phonetic Alphabet. The individual phonetic symbols are explained in Tables 3, 4 and 5 on pages 260-265. Please do take a look and see if you know some of these sounds from your own cats.
1. Sounds produced with an open mouth
a. The Purr: A very low-pitched, sustained, relatively quiet, regular sound produced during both inhalation and exhalation: [↑hːr-̃ ↑rː̃h-↓hːr-̃ ↑rː̃h] or [↓hːʀ̃ː-↑ʀ̃ːh-↓hːʀː̃-↑ʀ̃ːh]. A cat purrs when it is content, hungry, stressed, in pain, as well as when it gives birth or is dying. Purring probably indicates something more like “I am no threat,” “please leave everything as it is,” or “keep on doing what you are doing,” than “I am content.” Mother cats and their young often communicate with purring, probably because it is a quiet sound that is hard for other predators to detect. Purring is also common among some large wild cats—one of the best known is the cheetah named Caine. Many cats can simultaneously purr and trill or meow.
b. The Trill (Chirr, Chirrup, Grunt, Murmur, Coo): A relatively short and often soft sound that is frequently rolled softly on the tongue. Trilling sounds somewhere between