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CRCN CNRS

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B331
Julien.Meyer@gipsa-lab.grenoble-inp.fr

yoo essai

Researcher in Language Sciences at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, section 36)  email: julien.meyer - at - cnrs.fr

Phonetician, fieldwork linguist developing interdisciplinary research with bioacoustics, cognitive sciences and anthropology

I work on speech and language adaptation to different phonotypes (shouting, whistling, drumming) and language adaptation to music (musical surrogates) in different languages of the world (Amazon, Africa, Europe).

CV and Text publications: See lists on researchgate; or HAL open science

Latest publications (open access/author text) 2026-2020:

2026 

•  Meyer J. (in press => june). Mélodies parlantes d'Amazonie et d'Afrique: la voix substituée. Terrain 84 (Illusions Vocales) (abstract) (anthropology and language, music-language relation, onomatopeia, animal call imitation)

•  Meyer J., Diaz Reyes D., Batchelder-Schwab A., Gautheron B. (in press). Whistled Languages and whistled speech Encyclopedy of Languages and Linguistics 3. Elsevier. (editor link) (linguistics)

•  Meyer, J., Davy, D. (in press). Communications acoustiques adaptées au biome amazonien: imitations animales et parole sifflée des Wayãpi. In Bondil F., Danglades M., Davy D., Palisse M. (eds), Sociétés et humanités en Guyane : traces, mémoires, enjeux et dynamiques, Editions ORPHIE (preprint) (linguistic anthropology) 

2021-2025 

•   Meyer J., Diaz Reyes D., Batchelder-Schwab A., Gautheron B. (2025). Whistled Languages and whistled speech. Reference Module in Social Sciences. Elsevier. (editor link, author pdf) (linguistics)

•  Tran Ngoc A., Meyer J., Meunier F. (2025). Benefits of musical experience on whistled consonant categorization: analyzing the cognitive transfer processes. Speech Communication 174, 103302. (preprint on HAL, editor link, author pdf) (psycholinguistics)

•  Meyer J., Batchelder-Schwab A. (2025) World Map of Attested Whistled Languages. HAL (open access) (geolinguistics)

•   López-García, A., Alfaro-Contreras, M., Meyer, J., Valero-Mas, J.J. (2025). Whistler Identification in Whistled Spanish (Silbo): A Case Study. In: Karpov, A., Gosztolya, G. (eds) Speech and Computer. SPECOM 2025. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 16188. Springer, Cham. (editor link, author pdf) (automatic recognition, computing)

•   Meyer J., Manfredi, V. (2025). Auxiliary speech by vocal tract modulation and musical surrogacy, in Daniela Sammler (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Music (online edn., Oxford Academic, 20 Mar. 2025) (editor link, author pdf) (review on speech surrogates, music-language relation)

•   Tran Ngoc A., Meyer J. Meunier F. (2024). Musical experience and speech processing: the case of whistled words. Cognitive Science 48(12):e70032. (open access, author pdf) (psycholinguistics)

•   Meyer, J. (2024). L'adaptation des langues humaines aux contraintes acoustiques du territoire dans le cas des modalités de parole à distance, in Armand, F., Bert, M., Dunoyer, Ch. & Kopecka, A. (eds.) Actes Conf. Ann. du Centre d’Etudes Francoprovençales. Grammaires de l’espace et relations au territoire, Saint Nicolas, Italie. pp 123-142. (editor volume, author pdf) (environmental linguistics)

•   Tran Ngoc A., Meyer J. Meunier F. (2024). The effect of musical expertise on whistled vowel identification Speech Communication 159: 103058. (editor link, author pdf  (psycholinguistics)

•   Meyer J., Denis A., Dentel L.(2024) Progressive speech type adaptation to distance: frequencies of /a/ as a case study. ISSP 2024 - 13th International Seminar on Speech Production, May 2024, Autrans, France., 105-108.  (full Book of Abstracts, open access author abstract) (speech production, language adaptation)

•   Tran Ngoc, A., Meyer, J., Meunier, F. (2024). Whistled Phoneme categorization: the effect of vowel space range. In: Botinis, A. (Ed.), Proc. 14th Exling Conference. Athens, Greece, 115-118. (open access) (psycholinguistics)

•   Meyer J., Rolland V., Socas T., Díaz Reyes  D. (2024). A Sentence Comprehension Test with Whistled Spanish Experts. In Botinis, A. (ed.), Proc. 14th Exling Conference, Athens, Greece . 65-68. (open access full proceedings, article on HAL) (speech intelligibility, psycholinguistics)

•   Tran Ngoc, A., Meunier, F., Meyer, J. (2023). Effect of whistled vowels on whistled word categorization for naive listeners. In Proc. of Interspeech 2023 (pp. 3063–3067). (open access) (psycholinguistics) 

•   Tran Ngoc, A., Meunier, F., Meyer, J. (2022). Testing perceptual flexibility in speech through the categorization of whistled Spanish consonants by French speakers. JASA Express Lett. 2(9): 095201 (open access) (psycholinguistics)

•   Meyer, J. (2021). Environmental and linguistic typology of whistled languages. Annual Review of Linguistics 7, 493–510. (linguistics) (open access) 

•   Meyer J., & Moore D. (2021) A Flute, Musical Bows and Bamboo Clarinets that “Speak” in the Amazon Rainforest; Speech and Music in the Gavião Language of Rondônia. Frontiers in Psychology – Language Sciences 12:674289. (open access) (linguistic description, musical surrogates of speech, fieldwork linguistics)

•   Meyer, J., Magnasco, M.O., Reiss, D. (2021). The Relevance of Human Whistled Languages for the Analysis and Decoding of Dolphin Communication. Frontiers in Psychology – Language Sciences. 12:689501. (open access) (linguistics, bioacoustics)

Featured publications before 2021:

•   Dentel, L., Meyer, J. (2020). “How Rhythm and Timbre Encode Mooré Language in Bendré Drummed Speech” in Proceedings of Interspeech 2020- 21st Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Germany: DBLP), 1898–1902. (open access, author pdf) https://www.doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2020-2532 (talking drums, speech surrogates, rhythm)

•   Seifart, F.*, Meyer, J.*, Grawunder, S., Dentel, L. (2018). Reducing language to rhythm: amazonian Bora drummed language exploits speech rhythmfor long-distance communication. R. Soc. Open Sci. 5:170354. (open access)  (* 1st authors) (speech surrogates, rhythm)

 

BOOK: Whistled Languages: A Worldwide Inquiry on Human Whistled Speech | Springer (ask me for a free version)

VIDEO PUBLICATIONS: https://vimeo.com/user83181333

AUDIO PUBLICATIONS: https://soundcloud.com/user-28976943

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