Adult imitating child speech: A case study using 3D ultrasound

Abstract

Voice actors are interesting for linguistic study because of their unique abilities to manipulate their vocal tract and convey different social identities. This is essentially a field of professional folk linguistics where professionals manipulate their vocal tracts to convey socially indexed, linguistic features. This study uses Ultrasound paired with acoustic analyses to address what one amateur voice actor does while imitating a child voice. Previous studies have looked at anatomical and acoustic variations defining different character types such as laryngeal setting (Teshigawara, 2003; Teshigawara & Murano, 2004) and breathy voice in Anime (Starr, 2015). This study addresses specific tongue morphology resulting from an adult imitating a child’s voice and serves as a pilot for future study of professional actors. The participant is one adult, amateur actor who produced CV syllables at different places of articulation with different vowel qualities. Notable manipulations are hyoid bone raising, gesture fronting, and tongue “troughing” where the sides of the tongue are used to narrow the oral cavity. The actor constricts the filter in multiple ways to shrink the usable space in the oral cavity and imitate the acoustic signal from a child’s vocal tract. This presentation explores the anatomical manipulations the actor utilizes.