The VoQS System for the Transcription of Voice Quality

Abstract

While the history of interest in voice quality dates back at least as far as Henry Sweet (e.g. 1890), there was for many years little agreement on how to classify voice quality or how to transcribe it as part of a phonetic transcription. Indeed, there is not even agreement on precisely what the term covers in that it is often restricted to aspects of voice quality derived from vocal fold activity, rather than the fuller meaning which encompasses features derived from supralaryngeal settings of the articulators. Authors such as Nolan (1983) have used the phrase long-term quality as an alternative; however, in this article we will retain the traditional term but with a wide application to account for voice quality derived from airflow features, vocal fold activity, and supralaryngeal activity.

Learning and teaching phonetic transcription for clinical purposes

“…Many of us must be familiar with introducing a new symbol in class, such as [ ] for the velopharyngea l fricative often encountered in cleft palate speech, or [t Ï , d Ï ] for the lingualabial stops produced by some speakers with Down syndrome and Beckwith Wiedemann Syndrome, only to have a student report excitedly at the next week's class that 'by an amazing coincidence' they had heard the exact sound in clinic that very same week. Ball (1988aBall ( , 1988b noted a similar lack of transcriptional devices for both normal and atypical phonation; a clinical need which was met by the publication of the VoQS symbols (Ball, Esling and Dickson, 1995). VoQS provides a principled system for transcribing aspects of speaker voice quality, including but not limited to phonatory settings, based in large part on Laver (1980), and allows the transcriber to capture both normal and atypical voice qualities extending over stretches of speech which are larger than a segment or syllable.…”

Harsh Voice Quality and Its Association with Blackness in Popular American Media

“…Auditory analyses performed by the author and an additional trained phonetician identify stretches of the speech signal using a slightly modified version of the Voice Quality Symbols (VoQS) system [Ball et al, 1995]. The reason for this modification is as follows: in the VoQS system, harsh voice is represented as {V!…”

Transcription of Prosodic and Paralinguistic Features of Emotional Speech

“…Ball et al, (1995) present a voice quality transcription system based on Laver (1980), but using the transcription conventions from the extlPA character set (ICPLA Executive Committee, 1994). A monotone on the nuclear syllable is realised as a level nuclear tone.…”