Cross‐linguistic relations between voice quality and vowel quality

Abstract

A survey of impressionistic and instrumental descriptions of diverse languages (including new data from the Nilotic languages Dinka and Acholi) reveals repeated cases of phonemic and subphonemic interaction between phonation type and aspects of oropharyngeal resonance. Generally, if there is a regular interaction between intra‐ and extralaryngeal factors in a language, vocal fold configurations with greater laryngeal laxness (as required for regular phonation in consonants, murmur in consonants and vowels, and pitch depression) are associated with lower F1 and, conversely, greater vocal fold tension (associated with voicelessness, creaky phonation, and higher pitch) occurs with higher F1. Explanations for this universal in biomechanical (Laver, 1980), neuromuscular (Laufer and Condax, 1981), and aerodynamic (Ohala, 1983) aspects of articulation are proposed. Cross‐linguistic evidence suggests that articulation from intra‐ and extralaryngeal domains (putatively separate for phonological purposes) may function distinctively only in combination with each other in many cases. Implications of these and other findings include the need for a distinctive feature of “complex voice quality,” in contradistinction to the “primary feature” approach of Stevens, Keyser, and Kawasaki (1986), and the desirability of phonological models that accommodate phonetically based patterns of the relevant type in formulating principles of sound change and synchronic phonological analysis.