Breathy phonation in Gujarati: An acoustic and electroglottographic study.

Abstract

Recent electroglottographic research on Gujarati [Khan (2009)] reveals that speakers consistently distinguish breathy and modal vowels (e.g., /bar/ “twelve” vs /bAr/ “outside;” capitalization represents breathiness) by both closed quotient and closing velocity. Despite this interspeaker uniformity measured at the voice source, the acoustic correlates of the contrast measured in the speech output vary considerably across speakers. While some speakers mark breathiness with a larger H1-H2 difference, others use lower periodicity (CPP) or greater changes in intensity (rms energy). It is unclear how breathy vowels are contrasted with modal vowels following breathy consonants (e.g., /bAr/ “outside” vs /Bar/ “burden”) or to what extent the preceding consonant manner can affect the spectral acoustics of the vowel (e.g., /pAr/ “mountain” vs /vAn/ “vehicle”). To better capture the variation in both vowel and consonant phonations, the current study examines acoustic and electroglottographic data collected from naturalistic productions of near-minimal sets from a larger pool of Gujarati speakers, using a wider range of vowel and consonant types. Preliminary results suggest that while all speakers distinguish phonation types in both consonants and vowels based on electroglottographic measures, the acoustic cues in the output are far more complex. [Work supported by NSF.]