Whistled forms of languages are distributed worldwide and survive only in some of the most remote villages on the planet. They are not limited to a given continent, language family, or language structure, but they have been detected only sporadically by researchers and travelers, partly because they can be taken for nonlinguistic phenomena, such as simple signaling. Whistled speech consists of speaking while whistling to communicate at a long distance. The result is a melody that imitates modal speech and that remains intelligible for the interlocutors. This review proposes a typology of this special, little-known, natural speech type and takes socio-environmental and linguistic aspects into consideration. The amazing potential of this phenomenon to provide an alternative point of view into language diversity and speech offers a unique occasion to revisit human language with original insights embracing the adaptive flexibility that characterizes speech production and perception.

中文翻译：

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口哨语言的环境和语言类型学

口哨形式的语言分布在世界各地，只存在于地球上一些最偏远的村庄。它们不限于给定的大陆、语言家族或语言结构，但研究人员和旅行者只是偶尔发现它们，部分原因是它们可以用于非语言现象，例如简单的信号。吹口哨的讲话包括一边说话一边吹口哨进行远距离交流。结果是模仿模态语音的旋律，对话者仍然可以理解。这篇评论提出了这种特殊的、鲜为人知的自然语音类型的类型学，并考虑了社会环境和语言方面。