The physiological underpinnings of vowel height and voice quality

Abstract

This study examines the distribution of creaky voice across vowel heights and discusses the physiological mechanisms that may influence this distribution and its methodological implications. The data for this study come from eight dyads from the ATAROS Corpus of audio-recorded conversations between Pacific Northwest English speakers (Freeman 2015). Stressed vowels in content words were tagged for phonation type based on auditory judgments. A chi square test of independence (α = 0.01) found a significant relationship between vowel height and creak (χ2(1, N = 2459) = 83.58, p < 0.001), such that low vowels were more likely to be creaky than high vowels. This effect may be due to the same physiological mechanisms as Intrinsic Fundamental Frequency (IF0). Though the exact mechanism behind IF0 is unclear, various hypotheses have suggested that the tongue position required for high vowels pulls on the larynx, increasing tension, decreasing mass, and resulting in a higher F0 (Ladefoged 1964, Lehiste 1970). These...