The Journal of the Acoustical Society of KoreaISSN:1225-4428(Print) 2287-3775(Online)한국음향학회

This paper studies characteristics and causes of sound, and many others by distinguishing passivity and activity of the cases of a dog vocalizing human's words. As a result of the previous cases of vocalization of human's words, the dog was able to understand characteristics of a host's voice and imitate the sound using his own vocal organs. This is the case of passive vocalization accompanied by temporary voice imitation without a function of communication. On the contrary, as a consequence of the recently reported case in which a dog vocalizes such words as “Um-ma” and “Nu-na-ya,” it shows the vocalization pattern clearly distinguished from the prior cases. The given dog repeatedly vocalizes pertaining words in an active manner according to circumstances and plays a role of fundamental communication and interaction with its host. The reason why the dog can vocalize the man's words actively is determined to be that the dog has a high level of intelligence and intimacy with its host, that people react actively to its pertaining pronunciation, and so forth. The following results can be used for the study that investigates animals' sound with vocalization possibility and language learning feasibility.