Articulatory and acoustic phonetics of voice actors

Abstract

Voice actors are an under-utilized population for linguistic study. This type of vocal performance requires actors to perform careful, consistent, and precise vocal tract manipulations to portray different character types such as imitating a dialect or performing complex manipulations that simulate a smaller vocal tract to sound younger. There has been relatively little research focusing on voice actors' unique vocal tract manipulations. Some previous studies have looked at how actors alter laryngeal setting, to portray specific characters types in animation (Teshigawara and Murano, 2004; Starr, 2015), but investigations of articulatory manipulations employed are rare. Even more rare are investigations focusing on these articulatory manipulations and how they link to the acoustic output. This study uses 3-D ultrasound and acoustic analyses to compare the kinds of articulatory strategies that actors use to approximate a smaller vocal tract and achieve a ‘childlike' acoustic percept. Preliminary analyses indicate that actors have many different types and combinations of manipulations that they can implement including hyoid bone and laryngeal raising, gesture fronting, tongue grooving, lip movement, and F0 manipulation. Despite these differences in approach, the actors still achieve similar child-like percepts. This poster compares strategies from 3 professional and 3 amateur actors (4 male and 2 female) and will describe within-subject variation across each actor's adult and imitated child voices.