Creaky Phonation Research Articles

Preferential use of full glottal stops in vowel-initial glottalization in child speech: Evidence from novel words.

Vowel-initial glottalization constitutes a cue to prosodic prominence, realized on a strength continuum from creaky phonation to complete glottal stops. While there is considerable research on children's early utilization of acoustic cues for stress marking, less is understood about the specific implementation of vowel-initial glottalization in American English. Eight sequences of function + novel words were elicited from groups of 5-to-8-year-olds, 8-to-11-year-olds, and adults. Children exhibit a similar rate of prevocalic glottalization to adults but differ in its phonetic implementation, producing a higher rate of glottal stops compared to creaky phonation with respect to adults.

Has the Prevalence of Creaky Voice Increased Among Finnish University Students From the 1990'S to the 2010'S?

Everyday observations indicate that creaky voice has become common in Finland in recent years. Previous studies suggest that this trend is also occurring in other countries. This cross-sectional study investigates the use of creaky voice among Finnish university students from the 1990's to the 2010's. Material was obtained from a sound archive. It consisted of 200 samples from normophonic speakers (95 males, 105 females; mean age 23.7 years, SD 3.3 years, range 19-35 years). Normophonia was checked by two speech therapists in a preliminary perceptual analysis. Thereafter, two voice specialists rated the amount of creak and strain. A scale of 0-4 was used (0=none, 4=a lot). The inter- and intrarater reliability for the listening evaluations were satisfactory (for creaky phonation, rho=0.611, P < 0.001 for interrater reliability and rho=0.540, P < 0.001 for intrarater reliability; for strain, rho=0.463, P < 0.001 and rho=0.697, P < 0.001 for inter- and intrarater reliability, respectively). These results revealed a significant increase in the amount of perceived creak in females (from 1.04, SD 0.69 to 1.55, SD 1.06; P < 0.05, Mann-Whitney U test). In males, no significant change was found. However, the frequency of creaky voice use increased in both genders. No male speakers from the 1990's were rated as using "a lot" of creaky voice, but 2.3% of male speakers from the 2010's received this rating. Male speakers who were rated "quite a lot" increased from 5.9% in the 1990's to 18.1% in the 2010's. Female speakers rated "a lot" increased from 0% to 6%, and female speakers rated "quite a lot" increased from 7% to 25.8% over the studied time periods. Creaky phonation and strain correlated slightly in males (rho=0.24, P < 0.05) and moderately in females (rho=0.55, P < 0.001). Age did not correlate with the amount of creaky phonation (rho=0.005, P > 0.10 for males, rho=-0.011, P > 0.10 for females). It can be concluded that the prevalence of creaky voice has increased among young Finnish speakers, particularly females.

Modal Versus Creaky Filler Particles in Romanian Connected Speech

This paper represents a preliminary acoustic analysis of filler particles in terms of voice quality (i.e., modal vs. creaky phonation). The main research questions addressed in this study revolve around which particular voice parameters are indicative of (non)modal phonation of fillers used by healthy speakers of Standard Romanian, and whether the function of the filler particle varies with different voice qualities. The analysis is carried out on Romanian connected speech data extracted from the Ro-Phon corpus (non-pathological speech), an open-access linguistic resource developed during our postdoctoral research project financed by UEFISCDI (2020 – 2022).

Acoustic cues to the perception of Danish stød

This study examines the effect of F0 and creak (raspiness) on Danish stød perception. Stød is typically characterized by high fundamental frequency (F0) at the beginning of the syllable and low F0, often with creaky phonation, at the end of the syllable (Fischer-Jørgensen, 1989). However, it is not clear how these acoustic cues, high F0 at rhyme onset, low F0 at rhyme offset, and creak, contribute to the percept of stød for listeners. A nonce word ABX task and a perceptual rhyming task were conducted. Results from the ABX task indicate that nonce words with high-mid or high-low F0 contours and added raspiness (Corretge, 2012) or a sustained high F0 with or without raspiness were more likely to be considered the “same” as naturally produced nonce words with stød. In the rhyming task, nonce words with high F0 and raspiness were significantly more likely to be considered as rhyming with a naturally produced real word with stød for all tonal contours tested. Overall, the results indicate that both high F0 onset{Citation} and creaky phonation contribute to the stød percept. Furthermore, both cues were almost always needed to increase stød responses in both tasks, suggesting little evidence of cue trading.

Stød Timing and Domain in Danish

This study investigates the timing of stød, a type of phonological nonmodal phonation related to creaky voice in Danish, relative to the syllable. Stød-bearing syllables are characterized by high fundamental frequency (F0) and modal phonation at the beginning of the syllable followed by nonmodal, often creaky phonation and low F0 towards the end of the syllable (the stød phase proper). However, the timing of these two phases relative to the syllable and to each other has been debated. To investigate this, F0 throughout the word and the timing of the stød phase proper relative to the syllable were analyzed in five types of monosyllabic words. The results show that across word types the first stød phase (high F0) coordinates with the syllable rhyme onset, whilst the second phase is timed to the center of the sonorant rhyme, in contrast to previous hypotheses of stød timing. This relationship is formalized using the framework of Articulatory Phonology. In doing so, two additions to the theory are proposed to account for the biphasic nature of stød and the timing of the stød phase proper relative to the syllable.

Enlarging the spectrum of cluster headache: Extracranial autonomic involvement revealed by voice analysis.

BackgroundPeople with cluster headache (CH) are frequently burdened by misdiagnosis or diagnostic delay. The peculiar somatic and behavioral changes characterizing patients with CH are not useful to improve diagnostic accuracy. In our clinical experience, we noticed a typical voice quality with low and croaking tone in patients with CH.In this cross‐sectional study, we evaluated, by digital voice analysis, whether it is possible to identify typical voice quality characterizing patients with CH compared with healthy controls (HCs). Furthermore, to investigate whether putative differences in voice characteristics could be underpinned by constitutional aspects or pathological processes of vocal cords, subjects underwent a videolaryngostroboscopy. Smoking habits and alcohol consumption were specifically investigated.MethodsAfter conducting digital recording of the voices from both patients with CH and HCs in a soundproof insulated cabin in the laboratory of the Audiology Department, a set of voice parameters was analyzed. We included the measures of fundamental frequency, calculations of jitter and shimmer, and noise‐to‐harmonics ratios as well as quantities related to the spectral tilt (i.e., H1–H2, H1–A1, H1–A2, and H1–A3) in 20 patients with CH and in 13 HCs. A videolaryngostroboscopy was performed in all subjects.ResultsPatients with CH, explored during the cluster bout period, showed significantly lower second harmonic (H1–H2) values compared with HCs (−6.9 ± 7.6 vs. 2.1 ± 6.7, p = 0.002), usually characterizing the so‐called creaky voice. By using a laryngoscopy investigation, a significantly higher prevalence of mild to moderate vocal cord edema and laryngopharyngeal reflux signs were found in patients with CH (100% of patients with CH vs. 15% of HC, p < 0.001).ConclusionCreaky phonation is a “physiological mode of laryngeal operation” usually underpinned by shortened and thickened vocal folds. Creaky voice phonation can be due to a vocal fold's reduced capability to become slack or flaccid secondary to vocal cord edema underpinned by laryngopharyngeal reflux affecting the phonatory mechanisms in patients with CH. The laryngopharyngeal reflux may represent a dysautonomic sign related to the increased parasympathetic tone during in‐bout period, reinforcing the hypothesis of an extracranial autonomic dysfunction as part of CH clinical picture.

The independence of phrasal creak and segmental glottalization in American English

This study compared fundamental frequency (F0), H1*-H2*, H1*-A1*, and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) measures during intervals of three types of segmental glottalization and intervals of prosodic, phrasal creak. Results show that phrasal creak differs from all segmental glottalization types with lower F0 and H1*-H2* and higher HNR. /t/ glottalization before syllabic nasals has lower H1*-A1* than all other creaky phonation types, indicating concurrent pre-nasalization of segments preceding nasals, and coda /t/ glottalization has lower HNR than vowel-initial glottalization. A positive relationship between rates of segmental glottalization and phrasal creak suggests that speakers do not avoid their co-occurrence despite potential perceptual confusability.

The versatility of creaky phonation: Segmental, prosodic, and sociolinguistic uses in the world's languages

Creaky phonation (also known as creaky voice, vocal fry, laryngealization, or glottalization) is a voice quality that refers to shortened and thickened vocal folds that vibrate at a low and quasi-regular fundamental frequency with a long period of damping. Cross-linguistically, creaky phonation can span either short or long domains. When implemented on individual vowels or consonants (as in Zapotec or Montana Salish), it can signal phonemic contrast with other voice qualities, or it can be an additional acoustic cue to enhance other contrasts, such as tone (as in Mandarin or Cantonese). Another segmental use of creaky phonation in many languages is as a variant of glottal stop. Creaky phonation can also be implemented as a prosodic element that signals the end of a phrase (as in English or Mandarin), or indicates relinquishing a conversational turn (as in Finnish). It can also express meaning in a social interaction, such as irritation (in Vietnamese). Lastly, creaky phonation can be deployed as a sociolinguistic marker to establish identities, convey affect, or distinguish one speech group from another within the same language. In some social circumstances, such as the perception that young women use creaky phonation at greater rates than men do, it can be evaluated negatively by listeners. As creaky phonation can be combined with linguistic elements at various levels and is easily perceptible, it has taken on a remarkable number of roles in our linguistic repertoires. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain.

Acoustic measures of glottalization in native and nonnative English connected speech

Using perceptual coding methods, previous research on English connected speech by late-onset second language speakers (L2ers) found that L2ers produced unstressed vowel-to-vowel word junctures (e.g., go héad) as “delinked” (i.e., glottalized) at significantly higher rates than native speakers (L1ers), which could not be explained by cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from the L2ers' native language (L1). In the present study, we examined whether L2ers differed from L1ers also in degree of glottalization. Comparing high-proficiency L2ers from an L1 Mandarin background (N = 5) with L1ers (N = 5), we collected four measures of spectral tilt (H1–H2, H1–A1, H1–A2, H1–A3) at vowel-to-vowel word junctures spontaneously produced in interview speech (N = 615 for L1ers, N = 841 for L2ers). Results showed that although junctures coded as glottalized tended to show more negative H1–H2 values (indicative of creaky phonation) than did junctures coded as not glottalized, there were no significant differences between L1ers and L2ers in any of the spectral tilt measures examined, for either glottalized or non-glottalized junctures. These findings thus suggest that although high-proficiency L2ers may glottalize vowel-to-vowel junctures at higher rates than L1ers, when they do glottalize they do so to a similar degree as L1ers, with no apparent CLI from the L1.

Creaky phonation and Mandarin 214-Sandhi

Mandarin has four contrastive tones (55, 35, 214, and 51). The 214 tone is consistently produced at the lowest part of a speaker’s pitch range, and is therefore frequently accompanied by allophonic creaky phonation. Additionally, Mandarin has a complex system of tone sandhi; the type of sandhi being investigated in this paper is whereby, when two adjacent 214 tones are uttered, the first 214 changes to a 35, and the second 214 changes to a 21. Twenty speakers of Mandarin were recorded at the campus of Peking University using a sentence list constructed to elicit minimal pairs between sandhi-unaffected and sandhi-affected 214 tones. Age and gender were not considered a contributing factor to the presence of 214-linked creak, and so such factors were not controlled for. Preliminary results show that there is no significant difference between the amount of creak on affected and unaffected vowels. Therefore, the duration spent uttering the vowel at a lower pitch did not increase the intensity of creak. Howeve...

The influence of varying vowel phonation and duration on rhythmic grouping biases among Spanish and English speakers

Native Mexican Spanish and American English speakers were presented with streams of alternating syllables in which vowel duration and/or creaky phonation were rhythmically varied. Participants’ grouping biases were measured as a function of their behaviour in segmenting sequences into recurrent bisyllabic units. Results indicated a creak-last grouping bias in both language groups. Duration varied singly was associated with a weak long-first grouping bias for Spanish and no consistent trend for English. When long creaky and short modal syllables were alternated, there was a significant creak-last bias and again no effect of duration in the English group. However, in the Spanish group, the long-first trend observed for duration varied singly was reversed and the effects of duration and creak were additive. Finally, when short creaky and long modal syllables were alternated, duration effects were highly significant in both language groups (fewer creak-last, more long-last groupings). Creak has been associated with final positions in higher-order prosodic domains in English, and less prevalently in Spanish. The current results show that both English and Spanish speakers can use this cue to segment rhythmic sequences into smaller, foot or word-sized units. This study is the first to establish that creak is perceptually salient for Spanish speakers and to demonstrate that the percept associated with duration can differ depending on whether it is varied singly or together with creak. More generally, the current findings show that grouping effects extend beyond intensity, pitch and duration, the features most often manipulated in rhythmic grouping studies inspired by the Iambic-Trochaic Law.

Hejazi Saudi Arabic pharyngeal approximant 'Ayn involves 4 of 5 correlates of creak, but not positive H1-H2 spectral tilt

Five correlates of creaky phonation in the Arabic pharyngeal approximant 'Ayn—/ʕ/—were compared in speech samples of five male native speakers of the Hejazi dialect of Saudi Arabic to determine the degree to which creaky phonation could be a phonetic feature of 'Ayn. Jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), F0 lowering, and positive H1-H2 spectral tilt were compared in 360 (total) speech tokens of /a/, /aa/, and /aʕa/ vowel sequences. Acoustic analysis indicated significantly increased jitter, increased shimmer, lower HNR, and lower F0 values in 'Ayn sequences compared to non-'Ayn sequences, yielding strong evidence of creaky phonation. There was, however, no significant increase in degree of positive H1-H2 spectral tilt in 'Ayn sequences compared to non-'Ayn sequences. Positive tilt appeared to occur in free variation across vowel sequence types with many non-'Ayn sequences displaying the positive H1-H2 spectral tilt traditionally associated with creak. If increased jitter, increased shimmer, lower HNR, and local F0 lowering are correlates of creak in these realizations of 'Ayn, we must consider that creak is a key phonetic feature of 'Ayn for these Arabic speakers and that positive H1-H2 spectral tilt may not be a reliable indicator of creak in Hejazi Arabic.

Implosives in Jakarta Indonesian

Some Jakarta Indonesian speakers produce implosives as allophones of the voiced stops /b/ and /d/. Implosives are typically characterized by increasing voicing amplitude during closure, shorter closure duration and/or creaky phonation of the following vowel, but their actual realization shows much variation across languages (see Ladefoged &amp; Maddieson 1996; Lindau 1984). This study investigates the acoustic properties of Indonesian implosives. Thirty-three native speakers of Jakarta Indonesian were recorded. Each speaker produced one hundred words with initial /b/, /d/ or /p/ in different vowel contexts (e.g. /baik/, /biru/) embedded in carrier phrases. A trained phonetician judged whether each case of /b/ and /d/ in their speech was imploded or not. I measured the voicing amplitude and duration of each target stop and the creakiness of the following vowel by means of harmonic amplitude differences such as H1-H2 (Keating et al. 2010). A preliminary analysis reveals that stops judged as implosives generally had more increasing voicing amplitude than those judged as modal plosives. The former also had a shorter duration and their following vowels had relatively low H1-H2 and H1-A2 values, which indicates creakier phonation. The analysis also shows that implosivization is more likely to occur before a non-high back vowel.

Voice quality variation and gender

Recent work on American English has established that speakers increasingly use creaky phonation to convey pragmatic information, with young urban women assumed to be the most active users of this phonetic feature. However, no large-scale acoustic or articulatory study has established the actual range and diversity of voice quality variation along gender identities, encompassing different sexual orientations, regional backgrounds, and socioeconomic statuses. The current study does exactly that, through four methods: (1) subjects identifying with a range of gender and other demographic identities were audio recorded while reading wordlists as well as a scripted narrative assuming characters’ voices designed to elicit variation in vowel quality. Simultaneously, (2) electroglottographic readings were taken and analyzed to determine the glottal characteristics of this voice quality variation. (3) Subjects were then asked to rate recordings of other people’s voices to identify the personal characteristics associated with the acoustic reflexes of phonation; in the final task, (4) subjects were explicitly asked about their language ideologies as they relate to gender. Thus, the current study explores the relation between gender identity and phonetic features, measured acoustically, articulatorily, and perceptually. This work is currently underway and preliminary results are being compiled at this time.

Phonation and tone in conversational Beijing Mandarin

Previous acoustic analyses of phonation in Beijing Mandarin and closely related varieties have shown that phonatory variability in Mandarin is conditioned by lexical tone and prosody. Tone 3 (low) and tone 4 (high fall), as-well as syllables in domain-final position, have been reported to have more negative spectral tilt (particularly lower H1-H2), indicating creaky phonation. This study examines phonation in a corpus of 6752 vowels from conversational interview speech with 16 university students in the Beijing area, using four measures of spectral tilt: H1-H2, H1-A1, H1-A2, and H1-A3. The results, which diverge from findings based on laboratory speech, are possibly the first to report on spectral tilt for tone 5 (neutral tone). In mixed-effects regression models, tone 2 (high rising) has lower H1-A1, tone 3 and tone 4 have lower H1-A1 and H1-A2, and tone 5 has lower values of H1-H2 and H1-A1. Prosodic position interacts with tone. IP-final syllables for each tone exhibit higher spectral tilt on some measures than non-final syllables, though main effects for prosodic position give lower values in IP-final position for H1-A1, H1-A2, and H1-A3. These results encourage more attention to the interaction of prosodic and tonal factors in naturalistic speaking contexts when studying phonation.

Gender differences in the acoustic realization of creaky voice: Evidence from conversational data collected in Northern California

Although several sociophonetic studies report greater breathiness among female speakers, a pattern often attributed to sexual dimorphism in vocal fold physiology (Södersten and Lindestad, 1990), recent studies in North America report that young women use more creaky voice than men (Yuasa, 2011; Podesva, 2013). While these recent studies examine conversational data, they rely on auditory techniques to identify creaky phonation, leaving its acoustic realization in conversational speech largely unexplored. The present study investigates the acoustic properties of creaky voice in hour-long sociolinguistic interviews with 30 speakers (15 females, 15 males; age 18–86) from Northern California. Measures of spectral tilt were taken at the midpoint of all vowels in the corpus (N = 362,429), and data were fitted to a mixed effects linear regression model. As expected, several linguistic factors influence H1-H2 values (previous and following segment, intensity, F0, F1, vowel duration, stress, phrase position, phrase duration), alone and in interaction. With regard to social factors, H1-H2 is significantly lower for female speakers, indicating greater creak, even though the H1-H2 measure under-captures creakiness for female speakers (Simpson, 2012), and no age effect was observed. In sum, while females are generally creakier, apparent time data do not indicate that this is a recent trend.

The timing and sequencing of coarticulated non-modal phonation in English and White Hmong

Despite the growing number of studies on the acoustics of non-modal phonation, little is known about how two distinct non-modal phonations can interact acoustically when coarticulated. This study investigates the acoustics of breathy-to-creaky phonation contours in vowels from a production study of native speakers of English and White Hmong. These languages differ in the nature of the non-modal phonation types. In the English corpus, both the breathiness and creakiness are non-contrastive. In the Hmong corpus, the breathiness can be contrastive or a result of coarticulation with a neighboring segment, but the creakiness is always contrastive. The contours were analyzed using the three measures of phonation that were found to best differentiate non-modal from modal phonation in these languages: H1 ⁎–H2 ⁎, H1 ⁎–A1 ⁎, and harmonics-to-noise ratio. Results from these measures provide support for the presence of breathy–creaky contours in vowels. The timing and sequencing of the breathy and creaky phonation types are largely dependent on whether they are contrastive, with contrastive non-modal phonation being present during more portions of the vowel than non-modal phonation derived from coarticulation. The acoustic results also provide evidence for simultaneous breathy and creaky phonation types in Hmong.

Coarticulation between tone and glottal consonants in Itunyoso Trique

This paper investigates the realization of contrastive tone in three non-modal phonation contexts (creaky phonation, glottal closure, and breathy phonation) in Itunyoso Trique, an Oto-Manguean language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico. The study examines how coarticulatory glottalization (creaky phonation, glottal closure) coincides with coarticulatory pitch perturbations and spectral tilt changes on neighboring vowels. The onset of laryngeally induced F 0 perturbation effects and the timing of changes in spectral tilt were examined using acoustic data from six speakers of the language. The results show that in contexts where substantial non-modal phonation spreads onto the adjacent vowel, greater pitch effects are observed. In contexts where abrupt glottal closure occurs, less coarticulatory changes in spectral tilt and pitch are observed on adjacent vowels. In addition, strong tonal effects are observed for certain spectral measures. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature on tonogenesis and coarticulatory pitch effects.

Effects of native language on perception of voice quality

Little is known about how listeners judge phonemic versus allophonic (or freely varying) versus post-lexical variations in voice quality, or about which acoustic attributes serve as perceptual cues in specific contexts. To address this issue, native speakers of Gujarati, Thai, and English discriminated among pairs of voices that differed only in the relative amplitudes of the first versus second harmonics (H1–H2). Results indicate that speakers of Gujarati (which contrasts H1–H2 phonemically) were more sensitive to changes than are speakers of Thai or English. Further, sensitivity was not affected by the overall source spectral slope for Gujarati speakers, unlike Thai and English speakers, who were most sensitive when the spectrum fell away steeply. In combination with previous findings from Mandarin speakers, these results suggest a continuum of sensitivity to H1–H2. In Gujarati, the independence of sensitivity and spectral context is consistent with use of H1–H2 as a cue to the language's phonemic phonation contrast. Speakers of Mandarin, in which creaky phonation occurs in conjunction with the low-dipping Tone 3, apparently also learn to hear these contrasts, but sensitivity is conditioned by spectral context. Finally, for Thai and English speakers, who vary phonation only post-lexically, sensitivity is both lower and contextually determined, reflecting the smaller role of H1–H2 in these languages.

Using voice quality to learn non‐native tonal categories.

An artificial language learning experiment will be used to study if voice quality can be used to learn tonal systems. Cross‐linguistically, tone, and voice quality can co‐vary in different ways. For instance, Mazatec (Jalapa de Diaz), has three phonation types (modal, breathy, creaky) fully crossed with three level tone levels [Ladefoged et al. (1988)], while Mandarin has creaky phonation in Tone 3 and Tone 4, which are also distinguished from one another and Tone 1 and 2 by f0 contour [Davison (1991); Belotel‐Grenié and Grenié (2004)]. The goal of the study is to investigate if English listeners unfamiliar with tone languages can use phonation‐type contrasts to learn tonal contrasts in artificial tone languages differing in how tone and voice quality co‐vary. There will be a comparison of how learners generalize from training to novel stimuli for artificial languages where voice quality and tone contrasts are correlated and uncorrelated cues.