AN INTRODUCTION TO

PHONATION TYPES

Míša Hejná

Postgridiots, 2014

INTRO

What are phonation types?

different voice qualities we all use without realising

e.g. whisper

e.g. creak, and more!

Why should we care about them?

sociolinguistic functions

phonological functions

paralinguistic functions

OUTLINE

larynx

local and global phonation

overview of phonation types & their functions

How do we measure/analyse them?

LARYNX

YOU ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH SOME

LOCAL PHONATION

voiceless aspiration

[ph], [th], [kh]

glottals

/h/, /ɦ/, /ʔ/

these can be stretched out

aspiration a subsegmental unit, but we could say a whole sentence in whisper

we can glottalise in a word (/bʌʔə/), but also a whole sentence

we can say a whole sentence in a breathy voices

GLOBAL PHONATION

six basic phonation types

modal voice (neutral voice)

breathy voice

whisper

harsh voice

creaky voice (vocal fry)

falsetto

example = Czech malina “raspberry”

there are more, sometimes combining glottal and supraglottal

e.g. whispery-creak (lax-creak), tense, lax (Gobl & Ní Chasaide 2003)

other

and there are more classifications as well

GLOBAL PHONATION: A CONTINUUM?

creaky

modal

breathy

whisper

falsetto

harsh voice

MODAL VOICE

(MY MODAL VOICE A BIT BREATHY)

CREAKY VOICE

CREAKY VOICE

most often studied

usually described as aperiodic (but can be periodic)

different things have been said about creaky voice

paralinguistic various (what are your thoughts?)

pragmatic e.g. turn-taking (Finnish Ogden 2002)

sociolinguistic e.g. young American women often discussed recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbkETbHpyF4

language internal: e.g. Jalapa Mazatec – phonemic contrast of sonorants based on

presence or absence of creaky voice (Silverman et al 1995)

CREAKY VOICE

HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=NSNBH-YS36I

“RUG”

ejectives

implosives

BREATHY VOICE

BREATHY VOICE

vocal folds still vibrate voiced

more lax generating friction, reflected esp in F3+

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2okeYVclQo

paralinguistic: sultriness, seductiveness (Marilyn Monroe) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH3oOVKt0WI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxDdEPED0h8

freaky? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMj_KWftpBM

sociolinguistic: gender: breathiness may contribute to the perception of

femininity (e.g. Borsel et al 2007, references therein)

X sex (physiological)

language internal: e.g. Jalapa Mazatec – phonemic contrast of sonorants based

on presence or absence of breathy voice (Silverman et al 1995)

WHISPER

ejectives

WHISPER

vocal folds not vibrating, but close enough so that

friction is created in the glottis

paralinguistic

secrecy, fear (e.g. Gobl & Ní Chasaide 2003)

linguistic

as far as I know, only subphonemic

voiceless post- and pre-aspiration

FALSETTO

FALSETTO

vocal folds stretched and tense

only the edges vibrating

Paralinguistic

excitement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv4CHjtiWng

parodies, fairy-tale characters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR3bB2NGPOM

Sociolinguistic

Podesva 2007: “Phonation type as a stylistic variable: The

use of falsetto in constructing a persona”

barbecues, friends – a phonetic component of gay styles

more frequent as well as longer durations of falsetto

HARSH VOICE

high tension, aperiodicity

false vocal folds participating

epiglottis may be involved too

Paralinguistic

anger, violence

other

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2VCwBzGdPM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u56hqFp3oiE

Sociolinguistic

working class Edinburgh English (Coadou 2006)

OTHER VOICES

aging of the larynx starts after 30yrs (Hollien 1987: 3)

old people often described as having vocal fry

may be perceived as creakiness

but also as harshness

or breathiness

e.g.

Biever & Bless 1989

Ringel & Chodzko-Zajko 1987

Ryan & Burk 1974

Hollien 1987

OTHER VOICES

aging

MEASURING PHONATION

we have seen a lot of spectrograms and

soundwaves and listened to audios as well

the best method considering the

respondents (the least invasive)

but acoustic analyses are far from

unproblematic

MEASURING PHONATION:

ACOUSTIC ANALYSES

auditory combined with spectral and

waveform information (e.g. Gordeeva & Scobbie

2013)

Inverse filtering

“a process of cancelling the formant structure

thereby generating a replica of the glottal volume

velocity time function or its derivative” (Fant 1993: 8.)

various other sources of irregularities complicating

this process

(also investigated considerably by Gobl & Ní Chasaide 1992)

MEASURING PHONATION:

OTHER ANALYSES

videostroboscopy & videokymography (Švec et al 2000)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX0mEQW6i6s

EGG - electroglottography / laryngograph

MEASURING PHONATION:

PGG – PHOTOGLOTTOGRAPHY /

TRANSILLUMINATION

used e.g. by Ní Chasaide 1985 (pre-aspiration)

picture taken from Gerratt et al (1991): 101

TO FIND OUT MORE…

see the references

I included more than just those on the slides

THANK YOU

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biever, D. M., and D. M. Bless. (1989) “Vibratory Characteristics of the Vocal Folds in Young Adult and Geriatric Women”. Journal of Voice 3, 2. 120-31.

Borsel, J. V., Janssens, J., and M. De Bodt. (2007) “Breathiness as a Feminine Voice Characteristic: A Perceptual Approach”. Journal of Voice 23, 3. 291-4.

Coadou, M. (2006) “Voice quality and variation: a pilot study of the Liverpool accent”. Speech Prosody 2006.

Childers, D. G., and C. K. Lee. (1991) “Vocal quality factors: Analysis, synthesis, and perception”. Journal of Acoustic Society of America 90, 5. 2394-2410.

Fant, G. (1993) “Some problems in voice source analysis”. Speech Communication 13. 7-22.

Gerratt, B. R., et al. (1991) “Photoglottography: A Clinical Synopsis”. Journal of Voice 5, 2. 98-105.

Gobl, C., and A. Ní Chasaide. (2003) “The role of voice quality in communicating emotion, mood and attitude”. Speech Communication 40. 189-212.

Gobl, C., and A. Ní Chasaide. (1992) “Acoustic Characteristics of voice quality”. Speech Communication 11. 481-90.

Gordeeva, O., and J. Scobbie. (2013) “A phonetically versatile contrast: Pulmonic and glottalic voicelessness in Scottish English obstruents and voice quality”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 43, 3. 249-71.

Gordon, M., and P. Ladefoged. (2001) “Phonation types: a cross-linguistic overview”. Journal of Phonetics 29, 4. 383-406.

Hollien, H. (1987) “‘Old Voices’: What Do We Really Know About Them?” Journal of Voice 1, 1. 2-17.

Kane, J., and C. Gobl. (2013) “Evaluation of glottal closure instant detection in a range of voice qualities”. Speech Communication 55. 295-314.

Keating, P. A., et al. (2010) “Phonation Contrasts Across Languages”. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics. 188-202.

Ní Chasaide, A. (1985) Preaspiration in Phonological Stop Contrasts. PhD thesis, Bangor.

Ogden, R. (2002) “Creaky voice and turn-taking in Finnish”. BAAP 2002handout. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~rao1/BAAP.handout.pdf [accessed March 2014].

Ringel, R. L., and W. J. Chodzko-Zajko. (1987) “Vocal Indices of Biological Age”. Journal of Voice 1, 1. 31-7.

Ryan, W. J., and K. W. Burk. (1974) “Perceptual and acoustic correlates of aging in the speech of males”. Journal of Communication Disorders 7. 181-92.

Shahin, K. (2011) “Pharyngeals”. In Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Eds M. Oostendorp et al. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 604-27.

Silverman, D., et al. (1995) “Phonetic Structures in Jalapa Mazatec”. Anthropological Linguistics 37, 1. 70-88.

Švec, J. G., et al. (2000) “Resonance properties of the vocal folds: In vivo laryngoscopic investigation of the externally excited laryngeal vibrations”. Journal of Acoustic Society of America 108, 4. 1397-1407.