Phonation Types Research Articles

Phonation Patterns in Spanish Vowels: Spectral and Spectrographic Analysis

This article provides a detailed examination of voice quality in word-final vowels in Spanish. The experimental task involved the pronunciation of words in two prosodic contexts by native Spanish speakers from diverse dialects. A total of 400 vowels (10 participants × 10 words × 2 contexts × 2 repetitions) were analyzed acoustically in Praat. Waveforms and spectrograms were inspected visually for voice, creak, breathy voice, and devoicing cues. In addition, the relative amplitude difference between the first two harmonics (H1–H2) was obtained via FFT spectra. The findings reveal that while creaky voice is pervasive, breathy voice is also common, and devoicing occurs in 11% of tokens. We identify multiple phonation types (up to three) within the same vowel, of which modal voice followed by breathy voice was the most common combination. While creaky voice was more frequent overall for males, modal voice tended to be more common in females. In addition, creaky voice was significantly more common at the end of higher prosodic constituents. The analysis of spectral tilt shows that H1–H2 clearly distinguishes breathy voice from modal voice in both males and females, while H1–H2 values consistently discriminate creaky and modal voice in male participants only.

Classification of phonation types in singing voice using wavelet scattering network-based features

Classification of phonation types in singing voice using wavelet scattering network-based features

Uncovering Gender-Specific and Cross-Gender Features in Mandarin Deception: An Acoustic and Electroglottographic Approach.

This study aimed to investigate the acoustic and electroglottographic (EGG) profiles of Mandarin deception, including global characteristics and the influence of gender. Thirty-six Mandarin speakers participated in an interactive interview game in which they provided both deceptive and truthful answers to 14 biographical questions. Acoustic and EGG signals of the participants' responses were simultaneously recorded; 20 acoustic and 14 EGG features were analyzed using binary logistic regression models. Increases in fundamental frequency (F0) mean, intensity mean, first formant (F1), fifth formant (F5), contact quotient (CQ), decontacting-time quotient (DTQ), and contact index (CI) as well as decreases in jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), and fourth formant (F4) were significantly correlated with global deception. Cross-gender features included increases in intensity mean and F5 and decreases in jitter, HNR, and F4, whereas gender-specific features encompassed increases in F0 mean, shimmer, F1, third formant, and DTQ, as well as decreases in F0 maximum and CQ for female deception, and increases in CQ and CI and decreases in shimmer for male deception. The results suggest that Mandarin deception could be tied to underlying pragmatic functions, emotional arousal, decreased glottal contact skewness, and more pressed phonation. Disparities in gender-specific features lend support to differences in the use of pragmatics, levels of deception-induced emotional arousal, skewness of glottal contact patterns, and phonation types.

Phonation types and morpho-phonological structure as linguistic prerequisites of tonogenesis

Phonation types and morpho-phonological structure as linguistic prerequisites of tonogenesis

Phonation types and morpho-phonological structure as linguistic prerequisites of tonogenesis

This paper provides a systematic account of tonogenesis. The emergence of tone is a process of pitch upgrading from an accompanying feature of phonation types to a distinctive feature. It involves three linguistic processes: various phonation types, clear, breathy, falsetto, etc., which intrinsically induce pitch differences; sonorous monosyllabic morpheme structure that enhances the pitch differences; and phonologization, which conceptualizes the enhanced pitch differences to a phonological category, tone. A flowchart is designed to show how the preconditions lead to different phono morphological types of the world’s languages and finally output tone and its later development Furthermore, the geographic distributions and ecological constraints of non-modal voices and tone are explored

Tense and Lax Vowels in the Lahu Dialect of Yunshan: A Laboratory Phonological Study

A controversy exists regarding whether there are tense-lax vowels in Lahu and whether tense-lax phonation should be accorded phonological status, an issue that is closely related to the physiological movement of the larynx. This study presents an experimental analysis of the acoustic features of the Lahu dialect of Yunshan, using electroglottography to collect acoustic and physiological data and employing VoiceSauce and Eggworks to extract glottal features to explore laryngeal mode of motion. The study demonstrates a distinct tense-lax phonation contrast in Yunshan Lahu, which is characterized by multiple types of phonation, differences between front and back parts of tense vowels, and equal importance of tense-lax contrast and vowel length. To contribute to a systematic description of Tibeto-Burman language, this paper proposes to treat tense-lax contrast as the main feature in phonological induction, using length as its accompanying feature for explanation. From the perspective of the path of historical evolution, tenseness comes from the loss of plosive codas, and is also closely related to voiced, aspirated initials. In the process of transforming tense-lax features to tones, tense vowels retained their features of tenseness as a result of falling tones.

Roles of Phonation Types and Decoders' Gender in Recognizing Mandarin Emotional Speech.

Capturing phonation types such as breathy, modal, and pressed voices precisely can facilitate the recognition of human emotions. However, little is known about how exactly phonation types and decoders' gender influence the perception of emotional speech. Based on the modified Brunswikian lens model, this article aims to examine the roles of phonation types and decoders' gender in Mandarin emotional speech recognition by virtue of articulatory speech synthesis. Fifty-five participants (28 male and 27 female) completed a recognition task of Mandarin emotional speech, with 200 stimuli representing five emotional categories (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, and neutrality) and five types (original, copied, breathy, modal, and pressed). Repeated-measures analyses of variance were performed to analyze recognition accuracy and confusion data. For male and female decoders, the recognition accuracy of anger from pressed stimuli and fear from breathy stimuli was high; across all phonation-type stimuli, the recognition accuracy of sadness was also high, but that of happiness was low. The confusion data revealed that in recognizing fear from all phonation-type stimuli, female decoders chose fear responses more frequently and neutral responses less frequently than male decoders. In recognizing neutrality from breathy stimuli, female decoders significantly reduced their choice of neutral responses and misidentified neutrality as anger, while male decoders mistook neutrality from pressed stimuli for anger. This study revealed that, in Mandarin, phonation types play crucial roles in recognizing anger, fear, and neutrality, while the recognition of sadness and happiness seems not to depend heavily on phonation types. Moreover, the decoders' gender affects their recognition of neutrality and fear. These findings support the modified Brunswikian lens model and have significance for diagnosis and intervention among clinical populations with hearing impairment or gender-related psychiatric disorders. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24302221.

표준중국어 폐쇄·지속의 음향적 연구

A stop consonant is a phoneme that exists in all languages, and each language has one or more stop consonants systems, and each language's stop consonants system is divided into two, three, and four confrontation systems depending on the voice, presence of energy, or tension of the vocal cords. Standard Chinese stop consonants are clearly distinguished its phonation type by their aspiration characteristics, and have a binary oppositional system of aspirated and unaspirated consonants depending on the presence or absence of aspiration. This study examines the acoustic characteristics contributing to the discrimination of phonation type based on VOT, CD, VD, and F0, which are various acoustic characteristics of standard Chinese stop consonants in different environments. It is significant in that it is found that VOT, CD, and VD are acoustic cues that can divided into two confrontation system standard Chinese stop consonants, and F0 is not an acoustic cue that distinguishes the phonation types of standard Chinese stop consonants.

Comparison of laryngoscopic, glottal and vibratory parameters among Estill qualities – Case study

Estill Voice Training (EVT) is an effective educational system for developing and controlling distinct voice qualities used in contemporary commercial singing. EVT teaches six vocal qualities that differ at 13 levels. This study aims to investigate whether the distinct vocal qualities taught by EVT can be systematically differentiated based on laryngoscopic observations and vocal fold oscillation parameters. To investigate the differences in six EVT qualities, laryngeal dimensions and glottal area waveform parameters were measured in a single female subject who performed it in one-octave scale. Glottis Analysis Tools (GAT) were used to measure these parameters and phonovibrograms were obtained from the analysis. The resulting data were subjected to factor analysis to identify the systematic differences between EVT qualities. High-speed videolaryngoscopy analysis revealed a significant influence of vocal qualities on vocal fold oscillations. The factor analysis of the data identified three factors based on laryngeal dimension and four factors derived from GAT parameters. The first GAT factor was influenced by posterior adduction and distinguished belt quality from other qualities, suggesting a significant influence of the aryepiglottic sphincter. The second GAT factor contained parameters derived from glottal length and amplitude, suggesting a relationship not only with vocal registers but also with laryngeal height. The third GAT factor was best related to body-cover figure and phonation type (membranous medialization), while the fourth GAT factor was related to the amplitude-length-ratio. These findings suggest that vocal fold oscillations can be used to distinguish between Estill voice qualities.

Ten cases of continuum in language

Continuum is a one-dimensional pattern with a concise form and the significance of universality. “Prototype Theory” considers the members with the most common characteristics as the core members of one category, and all members of that category share some similar family features. Furthermore, quantum logic revised the classical logic law of “excluded middle” to the law of “included middle”, which provides us with a new perspective in the linguistic study. Based on the above theories and ideas, this paper lists ten cases of continuum in language: 1) the continuum of language similarity; 2) the continuum of word and non-word in Chinese; 3) the continuum of animacy of words in language; 4) the continuum of communicative pressure; 5) the continuum of sentential focus; 6) the vowel-consonant continuum; 7) the continuum of phonation types; 8) the continuum of nasality of sounds; 9) the continuum of r-suffixation; 10) the continuum of words with neutral tone. Continuum is the renewal of academic concepts and research methods, which is of great significance to the synchronic and diachronic study of language.

Evaluation of Glottal Inverse Filtering Techniques on OPENGLOT Synthetic Male and Female Vowels

Current articulatory-based three-dimensional source–filter models, which allow the production of vowels and diphtongs, still present very limited expressiveness. Glottal inverse filtering (GIF) techniques can become instrumental to identify specific characteristics of both the glottal source signal and the vocal tract transfer function to resemble expressive speech. Several GIF methods have been proposed in the literature; however, their comparison becomes difficult due to the lack of common and exhaustive experimental settings. In this work, first, a two-phase analysis methodology for the comparison of GIF techniques based on a reference dataset is introduced. Next, state-of-the-art GIF techniques based on iterative adaptive inverse filtering (IAIF) and quasi closed phase (QCP) approaches are thoroughly evaluated on OPENGLOT, an open database specifically designed to evaluate GIF, computing well-established GIF error measures after extending male vowels with their female counterparts. The results show that GIF methods obtain better results on male vowels. The QCP-based techniques significantly outperform IAIF-based methods for almost all error metrics and scenarios and are, at the same time, more stable across sex, phonation type, F0, and vowels. The IAIF variants improve the original technique for most error metrics on male vowels, while QCP with spectral tilt compensation achieves a lower spectral tilt error for male vowels than the original QCP.

The change in breathy voice after tone split: A production study of Suzhou Wu Chinese

In some languages, breathy voice plays a pivotal role in tone split. After tone split, breathy voice can undergo further changes. Suzhou Wu Chinese used to have a voicing contrast in initial obstruents, which has transphonologized to a tone contrast and resulted in a two-way tone split, with breathy voice in the low register tones. This study investigates the change in breathy voice after the tone split in Suzhou Wu with apparent-time data from speakers from three age groups. Simultaneous audio and electroglottographic recordings were collected. Principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis conducted on the acoustic measurements indicate that breathy voice is used less by younger speakers. Generalized Additive Mixed Models were conducted to reveal the changes in breathy voice during the time course of the vowel with regard to different low register tones. It is also found that T2 and T8 are undergoing a decrease in breathy voice with tone changes, but breathy voice is decreasing without tone change in T6. Younger female speakers are ahead of younger male speakers in the decrease in breathy voice. This paper provides a valuable investigation of the change in breathy voice after tone split and contributes to our understanding of the development of phonation types.

Differences of Electroglottographical Contact Quotients between Connected Speech and Sustained Phonation in Clinical Measurement of Voice

In clinical practice, sustained phonation is mostly used for acoustic voice measurements, while perceptual evaluation is based on connected speech. Since sustained phonation could be associated with the use of the singing voice, and since vocal registers are more relevant for singing rather than speech, it is unclear if vocal registers contribute to observable vocal fold contact differences between sustained phonation and speech. Sustained phonation (vowel [a] on comfortable pitch and loudness) and connected speech (German text: Der Nordwind und die Sonne) were analyzed for 1216 subjects (426 with and 790 without dysphonia) using the Laryngograph system (combining electroglottography and audio recordings). From these samples, fundamental frequency (ƒo), contact quotient (CQ), sound pressure level (SPL) and frequency perturbation (jitter first for sustained and cFx for connected speech) were evaluated. Compared to connected speech, the values of ƒo and SPL were higher for sustained phonation. For female voices, ƒo difference was greater than for male voices. At the same time, and only for the females, CQ was lower for the sustained phonation, indicating a register difference. In order to achieve a better comparability, sustained phonation should be standardized regarding the ƒo and SPL values in correspondence to the ƒo and SPL range of reading a text. This should also reduce the risk of using a different register for different types of phonation.

Acoustics of the creaky phonations in Yateé Zapotec

Yateé Zapotec (YZ) is a variety of Zapotec spoken in San Francisco Yateé, Oaxaca, Mexico. The language has three phonation types: modal, checked, and rearticulated. Checked and rearticulated phonations both involve glottalization realized on vowels but differ in the phasing of the glottalization in vowels. Checked phonation has late-phased glottalization whereas rearticulated phonation is characterized by mid-phased glottalization. Previous studies on the phonetics of Zapotec phonations seldom compare the phonations in the time domain. In this study, we compare the spectral tilt, degree of noise, amplitude of voicing, and duration of the three phonations over the time course of vowels. Using multi-dimensional scaling analysis, we also find that the amplitude dip in the middle of the vowels (induced by glottalization) differentiates rearticulated vowels from modal and checked vowels, while the shorter duration differentiates checked vowels from modal and rearticulated vowels. We conclude that in YZ, mid-phased glottalization is the defining feature of rearticulated phonation whereas duration is the defining feature of checked vowels. Future studies can test whether YZ listeners are also more sensitive to amplitude dip and short duration when perceiving rearticulated and checked vowels.

Transphonologization of onset voicing: revisiting Northern and Eastern Kmhmu'.

Phonation and vowel quality are often thought to play a vital role at the initial stage of tonogenesis. This paper investigates the production of voicing and tones in a tonal Northern Kmhmu' dialect spoken in Nan Province, Thailand, and a non-tonal Eastern Kmhmu' dialect spoken in Vientiane, Laos, from both acoustic and electroglottographic perspectives. Large and consistent VOT differences between voiced and voiceless stops are preserved in Eastern Kmhmu', but are not found in Northern Kmhmu', consistent with previous reports. With respect to pitch, f0 is clearly a secondary property of the voicing contrast in Eastern Kmhmu', but unquestionably the primary contrastive property in Northern Kmhmu'. Crucially, no evidence is found to suggest that either phonation type or formant differences act as significant cues to voicing in Eastern Kmhmu' or tones in Northern Kmhmu'. These results suggests that voicing contrasts can also be transphonologized directly into f0-based contrasts, skipping a registral stage based primarily on phonation and/or vowel quality.

Mapping Phonation Types by Clustering of Multiple Metrics

For voice analysis, much work has been undertaken with a multitude of acoustic and electroglottographic metrics. However, few of these have proven to be robustly correlated with physical and physiological phenomena. In particular, all metrics are affected by the fundamental frequency and sound level, making voice assessment sensitive to the recording protocol. It was investigated whether combinations of metrics, acquired over voice maps rather than with individual sustained vowels, can offer a more functional and comprehensive interpretation. For this descriptive, retrospective study, 13 men, 13 women, and 22 children were instructed to phonate on /a/ over their full voice range. Six acoustic and EGG signal features were obtained for every phonatory cycle. An unsupervised voice classification model created feature clusters, which were then displayed on voice maps. It was found that the feature clusters may be readily interpreted in terms of phonation types. For example, the typical intense voice has a high peak EGG derivative, a relatively high contact quotient, low EGG cycle-rate entropy, and a high cepstral peak prominence in the voice signal, all represented by one cluster centroid that is mapped to a given color. In a transition region between the non-contacting and contacting of the vocal folds, the combination of metrics shows a low contact quotient and relatively high entropy, which can be mapped to a different color. Based on this data set, male phonation types could be clustered into up to six categories and female and child types into four. Combining acoustic and EGG metrics resolved more categories than either kind on their own. The inter- and intra-participant distributional features are discussed.

Real-Time Visual Feedback in Singing Pedagogy: Current Trends and Future Directions

Singing pedagogy has increasingly adopted guide awareness through the use of meaningful real-time visual feedback. Technology typically used to study the voice can also be applied in a singing lesson, aiming at facilitating students’ awareness of the three subsystems involved in voice production—breathing, oscillatory and resonatory—and their underlying physiological, aerodynamical and acoustical mechanisms. Given the variety of real-time visual feedback tools, this article provides a comprehensive overview of such tools and their current and future pedagogical applications in the voice studio. The rationale for using real-time visual feedback is discussed, including both the theoretical and practical applications of visualizing physiological, aerodynamical and acoustical aspects of voice production. The monitorization of breathing patterns is presented, displaying lung volume as the sum of abdominal and ribcage movements signals. In addition, estimates of subglottal pressure are visually displayed using a subglottal pressure meter to assist with the shaping of musical phrases in singing. As to what concerns vibratory patterns of the vocal folds and phonatory airflow, the use of electroglottography and inverse filters is applied to monitor the phonation types, voice breaks, pitch and intensity range of singers of different music genres. These vocal features, together with intentional voice distortions and intonation adjustments, are also displayed using spectrographs. As the voice is invisible to the eye, the use of real-time visual feedback is proposed as a key pedagogical approach in current and future singing lessons. The use of such an approach corroborates the current trend of developing evidence-based practices in voice education.

Voice Onset Time in Healthy Young and Old Adults

Objectives: This study aimed to investigate age related changes in articulatory control by examining whether there were differences between young and elderly adults in their voice onset time (VOT). Methods: 16 adults over the age of 65 and 16 adults aged between 18-39 years old participated in this study. The experimental task consisted of 9 plosives, categorized by place of articulation and phonation type, paired with the vowel /a/ to form 2 syllable VCV non-words. Participants’ voice samples were analyzed using Praat. VOT mean was used to examine group differences in VOT and coefficient of variation (CoV) was used to examine group differences in VOT variability. Results: There were significant differences in VOT mean according to age group, phonation type, and place of articulation. The elderly adults had a longer VOT compared to the young adults with significant differences for place of articulation in velar plosives and significant differences for phonation type in aspirated plosives. There were significant differences in VOT CoV according to age group and phonation type. The elderly adults had higher VOT and CoV compared to the young adults with a significant difference in lenis plosives. Conclusion: The results of this study show that elderly adults have longer VOT durations and irregular articulatory control, reflected by higher VOT variability, compared to younger adults. These results may reflect age related declines in the coordination of the speech mechanism and reduced oral motor control.

On H1-H2 as an acoustic measure of linguistic phonation type.

The measure H1-H2, the difference in amplitude between the first and second harmonics, is frequently used to distinguish phonation types and to characterize differences across voices and genders. While H1-H2 can differentiate voices and is used by listeners to perceive changes in voice quality, its relation to voice articulation is less straightforward. Its calculation also involves practical issues with error propagation. This paper highlights some developments in the use of H1-H2 and proposes a new measure that we call "residual H1." In residual H1, the amplitude of the first harmonic is normalized against the overall sound energy (as measured by root mean square energy) instead of against H2. Residual H1 may mitigate some of the issues with using H1-H2. The current study tests the correlation between residual H1 and electroglottographic contact quotient (CQ) and compares the ability of residual H1 vs H1-H2 to differentiate statistically across phonation types in !Xóõ and utterance-level changes in phonatory quality in Mandarin. The results show that residual H1 has a stronger correlation with CQ and differentiates contrastive and allophonic phonatory quality better than H1-H2, particularly for more constricted phonation types.

Classification of voice quality using neck-surface acceleration: Comparison with glottal flow and radiated sound

The aim of the present study is to investigate the usefulness of features extracted from miniature accelerometers attached to speaker's tracheal wall below the glottis for classification of phonation type. The performance of the accelerometer features is evaluated relative to features obtained from inverse filtered and radiated sound. While the former is a good proxy for the voice source, obtaining robust voice source features from the latter is considered difficult since it also contains information about the vocal tract filter. By contrast, the accelerometer signal is largely unaffected by the vocal tract and although it is shaped by subglottal resonances and the transfer properties of the neck tissue, these properties remain constant within a speaker. For this reason, we expect it to provide a better approximation of the voice source than the raw audio. We also investigate which aspects of the voice source are derivable from the accelerometer and microphone signals. Five trained singers (two females and three males) were recorded producing the syllable [pæ:] in three voice qualities (neutral, breathy and pressed) and at three pitch levels as determined by the participants' personal preference. Features extracted from the three signals were used for classification of phonation type using a random forest classifier. In addition, accelerometer and microphone features with highest correlation with the voice source features were identified. The three signals showed comparable classification error rates, with considerable differences across speakers both with respect to the overall performance and the importance of individual features. The speaker-specific differences notwithstanding, variation of phonation type had consistent effects on the voice source, accelerometer and audio signals. With regard to the voice source, AQ, NAQ, L1L2 and CQ all showed a monotonic variation along the breathy - neutral - pressed continuum. Several features were also found to vary systematically in the accelerometer and audio signals: HRF, L1L2 and CPPS (both the accelerometer and the audio), as well as the sound level (for the audio). The random forest analysis revealed that all of these features were also among the most important for the classification of voice quality. Both the accelerometer and the audio signals were found to discriminate between phonation types with an accuracy approaching that of the voice source. Thus, the accelerometer signal, which is largely uncontaminated by vocal tract resonances, offered no advantage over the signal collected with a normal microphone.