Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T13:27:42.412Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Examining the relationship between vowel quality and voice quality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2019

Christina M. Esposito
Affiliation:
Macalester [email protected]
Morgan Sleeper
Affiliation:
Macalester [email protected]
Kevin Schäfer
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara [email protected]

Extract

The majority of studies on phonation types have focused on low vowels due to the minimal effects of their first formant on harmonic amplitude. In studies of multiple vowel qualities, reports on the relationship between vowel and voice quality are mixed: some show similar formant frequencies across phonation types (e.g. Abramson, Nye & Luangthongkum 2007, Khan 2012), while others show different formant frequencies depending on voice quality (e.g. Ren 1992, Kuang 2011). Results differ as to whether the degree of non-modal phonation varies (Andruski & Ratliff 2000, Kuang 2011) or does not vary (Esposito 2012, Khan 2012) across different vowel qualities. The present study draws on innovations which allow for more accurate corrections for the effects of formant frequencies on spectral measures (i.e. Hanson 1995, Iseli, Shue & Alwan 2007) to examine the relationship between vowel quality and voice quality, in eight languages – !Xóõ, Burmese, Gujarati, Jalapa de Díaz Mazatec, Mon, Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec, White Hmong, and Yi. While no significant difference in the degree of non-modal phonation due to vowel quality was found, results showed a crosslinguistic pattern in the relationship between vowel quality and voice quality: vowels with higher log(F1) and log(F2) values tended to be produced with creakier phonation, while vowels with lower log(F1) and log(F2) values tended to be produced with breathier phonation, but only on the measure H1*-H2*.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© International Phonetic Association 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramson, Arthur S., Patrick, W. Nye & Therapan, Luangthongkum. 2007. Voice register in Khmu’: Experiments in production and perception. Phonetica 64(2–3), 80104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Abramson, Arthur S., Mark, K. Tiede & Therapan, Luangthongkum. 2015. Voice register in Mon: Acoustics and electroglottography. Phonetica 72(2–3), 237256.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Andruski, Jean & Martha, Ratliff. 2000. Phonation types in production of phonological tone: The case of Green Mong. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 30(1/2), 3761.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Audacity Team. 2014. Audacity(R): Free audio editor and recorder, Version 2.0.0 [computer program]. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ (24 April 2014).Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin, Maechler, Benjamin, Bolker & Steven, Walker S. 2015. lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package version 1.1-8, http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4 (12 January 2015).Google Scholar
Bartoń, Kamil. 2015. MuMIn: Multi-model inference. R package version 1.15.1. http://CRAN.R-projectorg/package=MuMIn (12 January 2015).Google Scholar
Bickley, Corine. 1982. Acoustic analysis and perception of breathy vowels. Speech Communication Group Working Papers 1, 7393. [Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT]Google Scholar
Blankenship, Barbara. 2002. The timing of nonmodal phonation in vowels. Journal of Phonetics 30, 163191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & David, Weenink. 2008. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. http://www.praat.org/ (25 April 2014). [Computer program]Google Scholar
Bradley, David. 1982. Register in Burmese. In David, Bradley (ed.), Tonation (Pacific Linguistics Series A-62), 117132. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Brunner, Jana & Marzena, Żygis. 2011. Why do glottal stops and low vowels like each other? Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), Hong Kong, 376379.Google Scholar
Denning, Keith. 1989. The diachronic development of phonological voice quality, with special reference to Dinka and the other Nilotic languages. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.Google Scholar
DiCanio, Christian T. 2009. The phonetics of register in Takhian Thong Chong. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39(2), 162188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edmondson, Jerold A. & John, H. Esling. 2006. The valves of the throat and their functioning in tone, vocal register and stress: Laryngoscopic case studies. Phonology 23(2), 157191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esling, John H. 2005. There are no back vowels: The laryngeal articulator model. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 50, 1344.Google Scholar
Esposito, Christina M. 2006. The effects of linguistic experience on the perception of phonation. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Esposito, Christina M. 2010a. The effects of linguistic experience on the perception of phonation. Journal of Phonetics 38(2), 306316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esposito, Christina M. 2010b. Variation in contrastive phonation in Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 40(2), 181198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esposito, Christina M. 2012. An acoustic and electroglottographic study of White Hmong tone and phonation. Journal of Phonetics 40, 466476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esposito, Christina M. & Sameer ud, Dowla Khan. 2012. Contrastive breathiness across consonants and vowels: A comparative study of Gujarati and White Hmong. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 42(2), 123143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer-Jørgensen, Eli. 1967. Phonetic analysis of breathy (murmured) vowels in Gujarati. Indian Linguistics 28, 71139.Google Scholar
Garellek, Marc & Patricia, A. Keating. 2011. The acoustic consequences of phonation and tone interactions in Jalapa Mazatec. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41(2), 185205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Matthew & Peter, Ladefoged. 2001. Phonation types: A cross-linguistic overview. Journal of Phonetics 29, 383406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, Helen M. 1995. Glottal characteristics of female speakers. Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Hanson, Helen M. 1997. Glottal characteristics of female speakers: Acoustic correlates. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101(1), 466481.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hanson, Helen M. & Erika, S. Chuang 1999. Glottal characteristics of male speakers: Acoustic correlates and comparison with female data. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 106(12), 10641077.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hombert, Jean-Marie. 1978. Consonant types, vowel quality and tone. In Victoria, Fromkin (ed.), Tone: A linguistic survey, 77112. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huffman, Franklin. 1976. The register problem in fifteen Mon-Khmer languages. In Philip, N. Jenner (ed.), Austroasiatic studies 1, 575589. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Huffman, Franklin. 1990. Burmese Mon, Thai Mon, and Nyah Kur: A synchronic comparison. Mon- Khmer Studies 16–17, 3184.Google Scholar
Iseli, Markus, Yen-Liang, Shue & Abeer, Alwan. 2007. Age, sex, and vowel dependencies of acoustic measures related to the voice sources. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121(4), 22832295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Javkin, Hector & Ian, Maddieson. 1985. An inverse filtering study of creaky voice. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 57, 115125.Google Scholar
Jessen, Michael & Justus, C. Roux. 2002. Voice quality differences associated with stops and clicks in Xhosa. Journal of Phonetics 30(1), 152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kawahara, Hidei, Alain de, Cheveigné & Roy, D. Patterson. 1998. An instantaneous-frequency-based pitch extraction method for high-quality speech transformation: Revised TEMPO in the STRAIGHT-suite. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Paper 0659.Google Scholar
Keating, Patricia A., Christina, [M.] Esposito, Marc, Garellek, Sameer ud, Dowla Khan & Jianjiang, Kuang 2010. Phonation contrasts across languages. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 108, 188202.Google Scholar
Khan, Sameer ud Dowla. 2012. The phonetics of contrastive phonation in Gujarati. Journal of Phonetics 40(6), 780795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk, Paul, Jenny, Ladefoged & Peter, Ladefoged. 1993. Quantifying acoustic properties of modal, breathy and creaky vowels in Jalapa Mazatec. In Anthony, Mattina & Timothy, Montler (eds.), American Indian linguistics and ethnography: In honor of Laurence C. Thompson, 435450. Missoula, MT: University of Montana Press.Google Scholar
Kuang, Jianjing. 2011. Production and perception of the phonation contrast in Yi. Master’s thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter & Norma, Antoñanzas-Barroso. 1985. Computer measures of breathy voice quality. UCLA Working Papers 61, 7986.Google Scholar
Laver, John. 1980. Phonetic description of voice quality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Thomas. 1983. An acoustical study of the register distinction in Mon. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 57, 7996Google Scholar
Lewis, Paul M., Gary, F. Simons & Charles, D. Fennig (eds.). 2016. Ethnologue: Languages of the world, 17th edn. Dallas, TX: SIL International. http://www.ethnologue.com.Google Scholar
Lotto, Andrew, Lori, Holt & Keith, Kluender. 1997. Effect of voice quality on perceived height of English vowels. Phonetica 54, 7693.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maddieson, Ian & Peter, Ladefoged. 1985. Tense and lax in four minority languages of China. Journal of Phonetics 13, 433454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ratliff, Martha. 1992. Meaningful tone: A study of tonal morphology in compounds, form classes, and expressive phrases in White Hmong (Center for Southeast Asian Studies Monograph series; Northern Illinois University, Special report 27).Google Scholar
Ren, Nianqi. 1992. Phonation types and stop consonant distinctions: Shanghai Chinese. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Samely, Ursula. 1991. Kedang (Eastern Indonesia): Some aspects of its grammar. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.Google Scholar
Shue, Yen-Liang, Patricia, A. Keating & Chad, Vicenik. 2009. VoiceSauce: A program for voice analysis. The Journal of the Acoustical Society America 124(4), 2221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shue, Yen-Liang, Patricia, A. Keating, Chad, Vicenik & Kristine, Yu. 2011. VoiceSauce: A program for voice analysis. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), Hong Kong, 18461849.Google Scholar
Silverman, Daniel, Barbara, Blankenship, Paul, Kirk & Peter, Ladefoged. 1995. Phonetic structures in Jalapa Mazatec. Anthropological Linguistics 37, 7088.Google Scholar
Sjölander, Kåre. 2004. The snack sound toolkit. KTH Stockholm, Sweden. http://www.speech.kth.se/snack/ (1 June 2014).Google Scholar
Smalley, William. 1976. The problem of consonants and tone: Hmong (Meo, Miao). In William, Smalley (ed.), Phonemes and orthography: Languages planning in ten minority languages in Thailand (Pacific Linguistics Series C no. 43). Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Thongkum, Theraphan. 1986. An acoustic study of the register complex in Kui (Suai). The Mon-Khmer Studies Journal 15, 120.Google Scholar
Thongkum, Theraphan. 1987a. Another look at the register distinction in Mon. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 67, 132165.Google Scholar
Thongkum, Theraphan. 1987b. Phonation types in Mon-Khmer languages. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 67, 948.Google Scholar
Thongkum, Theraphan. 1990. The interaction between pitch and phonation type in Mon: Phonetic implications for a theory of tonogenesis. Mon-Khmer Studies 16–17, 1124.Google Scholar
Traill, Anthony. 1985. Phonetic and phonological studies of !Xóõ Bushman. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Watkins, Justin W. 2000. Notes on creaky and killed tone in Burmese. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 10, 139149.Google Scholar
Watkins, Justin W. 2001. Burmese. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 31(2), 291295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wayland, Ratree & Allard, Jongman. 2002. Registrogenesis in Khmer. Mon-Khmer Studies 32, 101114.Google Scholar