Subglottal pressure and final lowering in English

Abstract

Quantitative models of intonation in a variety of languages typically specify a long-range downtrend across the sentence that provides a declining backdrop for the steeper rises and falls of more local pitch events such as accents and word tones. Several studies of this "declination" in English and several other languages have isolated a component of somewhat steeper decline that covers only the last few centiseconds of "lab speech" utterances. Other studies suggest that this "final lowering" may be particular to utterances with a "declarative intonation" pattern, and that it is associated particularly with the ends of discourse units. Thus final lowering seems to be associated pragmatically with a sense of fading off or finality. To see whether final lowering can be attributed in part to a fading off of subglottal pressure, we examined the two measures together in two databases of utterances that varied in intonation contour. To minimize confounds from more local pitch specifications, we looked at the relationship between final lowering and subglottal pressure only in the intonational "tail" -i.e., the portion of the contour after the last pitch accent. The slope of the decline of the subglottal pressure varied as a function of the phonological specification of the tones in the tail. Utterances with declarative intonation or with any other contour sharing the phonological specification of a low tone at the end of the tail consistently showed a decline in subglottal pressure, whereas utterances with "yes-no question intonation" or any other contour sharing the phonological specification of a final high tone showed lesser declines or even increases.

Acoustic Vowel Reduction in Creek: Effects of Distinctive Length and Position in the Word

“…We call this phenomenon positional reduction. A few recent reports have found similar effects variously attributed to supralaryngeal declination [Vaissière, 1986;Vayra and Fowler, 1992;Krakow et al, 1995], initial strengthening [Jun, 1993;Fougeron and Keating, 1997], or final fade [Herman et al, 1997]. Our study is similar to the study of Swedish vowels reported by Nord [1986] in that we find that final vowels though longer than initial vowels are nonetheless reduced.…”

“…The unifying factor seems to be that syllables toward the ends of prosodic constituents are produced with less articulatory effort than the other syllables in an utterance. This focus on the ends of prosodic units underlies the term 'final fade' [Herman et al, 1997] to describe a complex of acoustic and articulatory phenomena which occur at the ends of prosodic units, as well as the 'sonority' theory of articulatory dynamics [Beckman et al, 1992] in which final prosodic edges are characterized by reduced gestural stiffness -giving rise to final lengthening and perhaps also positional reduction. However, other researchers looking at apparently similar phonetic phenomena have adopted a somewhat different focus.…”

Neural control of fundamental frequency rise and fall in Mandarin tones

“…For instance, the cricothyroid and thyroarytenoid muscles act synergistically to achieve changes in fundamental frequency (Ohala, 1978;Titze, Luschei, & Hirano, 1989) and the role of the cricothyroid depends upon vocal fold position at the time of contraction (Kuna, Smickley, Vanoye, & McMillan, 1994;Titze et al, 1989). Fundamental frequency rises and falls can also be achieved by increases or decreases of subglottal air pressure (Herman, Beckman, & Honda, 1996;Monsen, Engebretson, & Vemula, 1978). Subglottal pressure changes are mainly achieved by muscles that adjust the pulmonary system.…”

“…However, the significant positive and negative connection of the insula and LMC seems to be contrary to the above mentioned single passive mechanism hypothesis. Furthermore, the rise and fall of fundamental frequency may also have involved increased or decreased subglottal air pressure (Herman et al, 1996;Monsen et al, 1978), Brain regions involved in respiratory control, especially the inferolateral sensory region and auditory cortex associated with expiration, may also be involved in fundamental frequency control (Ludlow, 2005). Thus, it is possible that multiple neural mechanisms are involved.…”

Phonological influences on the realization of final lowering evidence from dialogue Chinese Mandarin

“…They thought that a drop in the subglottal pressure and relaxation of the laryngeal muscles were necessary articulatory correlates to final lowering. This claim was followed by Herman, Beckman and Honda [14], who considered final Ya Li, Hao Che, Shanfeng Liu, Jianhua Tao National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China {yli, hche, sfiiu, jhtao}@nlpr.ia.ac.cn lowering as one of the products of an overall "vocal effort" decrease towards the end of an utterance. This decrease would result in a drop in both subglottal pressure and gesture stiffness, and cause a series of chain reaction including segmental lengthening, average amplitude decreasing, voice quality changing and final pitch lowering.…”