Laryngeal adjustments for devoicing of /h/: A within-speaker study

Abstract

Past work has investigated cross-speaker and cross-gender differences in voicing of /h/ in English speakers. The purpose of this study was to see whether a phonetically sophisticated speaker could intentionally alter his /h/ voicing patterns, and, if so, how he would effect any changes. One adult male speaker of American English, a trained phonetician and dialectologist, produced approximately 500 repetitions of intervocalic /h/ in short carrier phrases, with differing vowel contexts and loudness levels. In the first block, the speaker produced the utterances normally (i.e., without specific instructions on /h/ production); in the second, he was explicitly asked to devoice his /h/’s. Results indicated that the incidence of devoiced /h/ increased from 2% in the first block to 69% in the second block. On average, the /h/’s in the second block were produced with higher baseline airflows, indicating more extreme laryngeal abduction. This alone did not account for the speaker’s devoicing behavior, however, since the soft condition, which had the lowest peak airflows in the second block, had the most devoicing. Voice source measures will be compared between the two blocks to clarify how the speaker altered his laryngeal setting to achieve more devoicing. [Work supported by NIH.]