Vocal fold vibratory patterns in tense versus lax phonation contrasts

Abstract

TENSE--LAX PHONATION CONTRASTS 2This study explores the vocal fold contact patterns of one type of phonation contrastthe tense vs. lax phonation contrasts of three Yi (Loloish) languages. These contrasts are interesting because neither phonation category is very different from modal voice, and because both phonations are largely independent of the languages' tonal contrasts.Electroglottographic (EGG) recordings were made in the field, and traditional EGG measures were derived. These showed many small but significant differences between the phonations, with tense phonation having greater contact quotients and briefer but slower changes in contact. Functional Data Analysis was then applied to entire EGG pulse shapes, following Mooshammer (2010). The resulting first Principal Component was found to be mostly strongly related to the phonation contrasts, and correlated with almost all the traditional EGG measures. Unlike the traditional measures, however, this component also seems to capture differences in abruptness of contact. Furthermore, previously-collected perceptual responses from native speakers of one of the languages correlated better with this component than with any other EGG measure or any acoustic measure. The differences between these tense and lax phonations are not large, but apparently they are consistent enough, and perceptually robust enough, to support this linguistic contrast.

The phonetic properties of the non-modal phonation in Shanghainese

“…For example, it has been proposed that H1-H2 is physiologically related to how open the vocal folds are when they vibrate, as well as their medial thickness (Kreiman et al, 2008;Samlan, Story, & Bunton, 2013;Zhang, 2016); H1-A1 is related to posterior glottal opening at the arytenoids (Hanson et al, 2001); and H1-A2 and H1-A3 are correlated with the abruptness of vocal fold closure (Stevens, 1977;Holmberg et al, 1995;Hanson et al, 2001;Cho, Jun, & Ladefoged, 2002;Khan, 2012). However, languages often use more than one of these measures to distinguish phonation contrasts: for example, Jalapa Mazatec (Blankenship, 2002;Garellek & Keating, 2011), Chanthaburi Khmer (Wayland & Jongman, 2003), Southern Yi (Kuang & Keating, 2014), White Hmong (Esposito, 2012;Garellek, 2012), Gujarati (Khan, 2012;Nara, 2017), Marathi (Berkson, 2019), Mon (Abramson, Tiede, & Luangthongkum, 2015), Madurese (Misnadin, Kirby, & Remijsen, 2015), Cao Bằng (Pittayaporn & Kirby, 2017) and Chichimeco (Kelterer, 2017). We also include other spectral tilt measures that are perceptually salient in the psychoacoustic experiments (Kreiman et al, 2014;Garellek et al, 2016), as these measures could potentially be important in production as well.…”

“…It is defined as the amplitude of the positive peak in the first derivative of the EGG signal. DECPA is also known as Peak Increase in Contact (PIC) in the literature (Keating et al, 2010;Kuang, 2013;Kuang & Keating, 2014). This measure successfully distinguishes contrastive phonation types in several languages (Esposito, 2012;Kuang & Keating, 2014), and the breathier phonation was found to have a higher PIC value.…”

“…DECPA is also known as Peak Increase in Contact (PIC) in the literature (Keating et al, 2010;Kuang, 2013;Kuang & Keating, 2014). This measure successfully distinguishes contrastive phonation types in several languages (Esposito, 2012;Kuang & Keating, 2014), and the breathier phonation was found to have a higher PIC value. Finally, Speed Quotient (SQ; Holmberg, Hillman, & Perkell, 1988;Dromey, Stathopoulos, & Sapienza, 1992), defined as the ratio between contacting and decontacting duration, was also included.…”

“…Rose (1989Rose ( , 2015 also reported that some speakers even used 'harsh voice,' a phonation type with extreme glottal (and pharyngeal) constriction and substantial aperiodic noise. Kuang & Keating, 2014), where the noise component does not play much of a role in distinguishing phonation contrasts, as well as languages with typical 'breathy' voice (e.g.,…”

Covariation between voice quality and pitch: Revisiting the case of Mandarin creaky voice

“…Jalapa Mazatec combines three phonations with three level tones (plus contours) . Southern Yi (Kuang, 2011;Kuang and Keating, 2014) combines two phonations (tense and lax) with two of the three level tones (high tone does not have the phonation contrast). In these cases, pitch and phonation contrast orthogonally, which means, for example, that a mid tense tone in Southern Yi is distinct from a mid lax tone by different phonation types.…”