prop-vow2.htm
by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR.
UKT: Based on
• Properties of Consonants and Vowels, Kevin Russell, Linguistics Department, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V5, CANADA http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/notes.htm.
• Online Phonetics Course (UNIL), Department of Linguistics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
(This source was downloaded in 2000 or a few years later, and instead of the original links, you can still get to them from: http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184_fr.html -- UKT: 070823)
Vowels continuation from prop-vow.htm
Phonation or voicing
Nasality
Tongue tip articulation
Lip rounding
Glides
Diphthongs
UKT notes largely from Wikipedia
for updating my knowledge
• high vowels •
phonation •
phonation (supra-glottal) • phonemic
distinction • supra-glottal •
human voice production system
The following is mainly from UNIL, which listed 25 vowels, compared to about a dozen in Burmese-Myanmar.
www.unil.ch/ling/page24437.html download 070818 Pix on right from: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Illu_conducting_passages.jpg download 070909
The chief characteristic of the vowels is the freedom with which the air stream, once out of the glottis, passes through the speech organs. The supra-glottal resonators do not cut off or constrict the air; they cause only resonance, that is to say, the reinforcement of certain frequency ranges. A vowel's timbre (or quality) depends on the following elements:
• the number of active resonators (among the oral, labial, and nasal cavities);
• the shape of the oral cavity;
• the size of the oral cavity.See the human-voice production system in my notes.
The differences between vowels that we've seen so far all involve the position of the tongue body. There are other articulators that function independently of the tongue body which can also change the vowel sound. The following are some examples. We have gone over them before in section on Vowel chart in prop-vow.htm.
UKT: Voicing can mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voicing 070909):
• In phonetics, voice (phonetics) is a characteristic of phonation. See phonation and phonation (supra-glottal) in my notes
• In music, voicing (music) is a representation of a chord.
• In the construction of musical instruments, the process of manipulating the mechanics of an individual note in order to change or refine the timbre or volume of that note.
As with consonants, the vocal cords may or may not be vibrating regardless of what the rest of the vocal tract is doing. Vowels are almost always voiced. But a few languages have contrastive voiceless vowels (that is, the word can mean something different if your vocal cords aren't vibrating during the vowel). English has a few environments where vowels may be (non-contrastively) voiceless.
Supra-glottal phonation: In the last few decades it has become apparent that phonation may involve the entire larynx, with as many as six valves and muscles working either independently or together. From the glottis upward, these articulations are:
1. glottal (the vocal cords), producing the distinctions described in phonation in my notes.
2. ventricular (the 'false vocal cords', partially covering and damping the glottis)
3. arytenoid (sphincteric compression forwards and upwards)
4. epiglotto-pharyngeal (retraction of the tongue and epiglottis, potentially closing onto the pharyngeal wall)
5. raising or lowering of the entire larynx . See larynx in my notes.
6. narrowing of the pharynx
Until the development of fiber-optic laryngoscopy, the full involvement of the larynx during speech production was not observable, and the interactions among the six laryngeal articulators is still poorly understood. However, at least two supra-glottal phonations appear to be widespread in the world's languages. These are harsh voice ('ventricular' or 'pressed' voice), which involves overall constriction of the larynx, and faucalized voice ('hollow' or 'yawny' voice), which involves overall expansion of the larynx.
In English, every voiced
fricative
corresponds to a voiceless one. For the pairs of English
plosives, however, the distinction is better specified as
voice onset time rather than simply voice: In initial position /b d g/ are
only partially voiced (voicing begins during the hold of the consonant), while
/p t k/ are
aspirated (voicing doesn't begin until well after its release).
Certain English
morphemes
have voiced and voiceless
allomorphs,
such as the plural, verbal, and possessive endings spelled -s (voiced in
kids /kɪdz/ but
voiceless in kits /kɪts/)
and the past-tense ending spelled -ed (voiced in buzzed
/bʌzd/ but voiceless in
fished /fɪʃt/.
UKT: This subsection has materials from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_vowel download 070908
As with consonants, air may or may not be flowing through the nose, regardless of what the tongue or lips may be doing. Vowels tend to be oral, but many languages also have a set of nasal vowels (e.g., French). English has a few environments where vowels may be (non-contrastively) nasalized. Nasal vowels are produced with a lowering of the soft palate (velum) so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. The term stands in opposition to the term "oral vowel" refers to an ordinary vowel without this nasalisation. Note that these terms can be slightly misleading as the air does not come exclusively out of the nose in nasal vowels.
In most languages, vowels that are adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum in a natural process of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal, though few speakers would notice. This is the case in English: vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels (and all vowels are considered phonemically oral). However, the word "huh" is generally pronounced with a nasal vowel.
UKT: Nasals are: English-Latin <ng, n, m>, and Burmese-Myanmar {nga., Ña./ña., Na., na., ma.}. In Burmese-Myanmar, the inherent vowel is hidden and there is no problem of assimilation. However, in Romabama because we are using the Latin alphabet in the same way as English, we need to show the peak vowel, V, of the CVÇ syllable. Once, the peak vowel is shown the problem of nasality and assimilation comes in.
In French, by contrast, nasal vowels are phonemes distinct from oral vowels, since words exist which differ mainly in the nasal or oral quality of a vowel. For example, the words beau /bo/ "beautiful" and bon /bõ/ "good" are pronounced virtually the same (the vowel in bon is slightly more open, leading many dictionaries to transcribe it /bɔ̃/), except that the former is oral and the latter is nasal.
UKT: Though I cannot speak French, since my alternate home is in Canada which is officially a bilingual country in English and French, I am familiar with French pronunciation. When you speak Romabama as it is spelled, pronouncing your words as if speaking French, you will be able to pronounce Burmese words quite closely. Even if you don't speak French, don't despair - just don't pronounce the end consonants of CVÇ. If you would like to sample French pronunciations, or learn French the easy way, just visit a language teaching site such as www.rocketlanguages.com/french/premium/index.php?hop=hcb25 where you will get free lessons.
In Min Chinese, nasal vowels carry persistent air flow though both the mouth and the nose, producing an invariant and sustainable vowel quality. That is, this type of nasalization is synchronic and suprasegmental to the voicing. In contrast, nasal vowels in French or Portuguese are transitional, where the velum ends up constricting the mouth airway.
In languages which have transitional nasal vowels, it is commonly the case that there are fewer nasal vowels than oral ones. This appears to be due to a loss of distinctivity caused by the nasal articulation.
Abugida scripts, which are used for most Indian languages, use the bindu (.) {thé:thé:ting} symbol and its variations to denote nasal vowels and nasal junctions between consonants.
The tongue tip may be curled back to perform a retroflex approximant, whatever the tongue body is doing. The "R-colouring" that this adds to the vowel is often called rhoticization. -- http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/sec3/morevowl.htm
The pronunciation of c4 consonants of the {wag.}-akshara, is not straight forward for the Burmese-Myanmar speakers. We tend to pronounce them exactly as the c3, e.g. {ga.} and {Ga.} are pronounced the same. However, according to Burmese-Myanmar Buddhist monks (and my experience as well, when I was ordained and spent a short time as a full-fledge monk -- as mandated by our culture), there is a difference. This is confirmed by Rev. U Kaw-wi-da, the head of Toronto Burmese-Buddhist monastery. According to him, {Ga.} is pronounced with a grave accent with a "h-sound". This distinction is very important when the monks are reciting {ka.ma.wa} (MEDict024). Since, the same c4 consonants are also in Sanskrit-Devanagari, I am curious to know, how Hindi-Devanagari (Hindi is the living modern version, while Sanskrit is a "dead" language) would speak. (Though I have heard the Hindi-Devanagari speakers speak, as I have said before, I am "phoneme-deaf"). The following is a paper on the same topic.
Identification of Hindi dental and retroflex consonants by native English and Japanese speakers (A) , by John S. Pruitt, Dept. of Psychol., Univ. of South Florida, in J. of Acoustical Soc. of America, May 1994, vol 95, issue 5, pp.3011-3012:
"Previous research has shown that English speakers have great difficulty distinguishing dental and retroflex stop consonants of the Hindi language (which occur in five pairs of stop consonants in Hindi). While both dental and retroflex consonants, in almost all of the manner/voicing contexts of Hindi, occur as allophones in English, they do not occur phonemically. Unlike English, Japanese includes an alveolar-retroflex distinction (the Japanese /d/ versus the flapped /r/). However, no research has determined whether Japanese speakers can distinguish the Hindi contrast. This research compared English and Japanese speakers' ability to distinguish these Hindi stop consonants in four of the five manner/voicing contexts (breathy-voiced, prevoiced, voiceless-aspirated, and voiceless-unaspirated). Subjects were presented consonant-vowel syllables in three vowel contexts (/a/, /e/, /o/) that were produced by two native Hindi speakers. Marked differences were found between these two language groups that were dependent upon the manner/voicing context of the consonants. This research contributes to our understanding of the role of native language experience (phonemic versus phonetic) in the perception of non-native speech contrasts." -- http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/...
The vowels following the c4 consonants, seem to be under their influence. The tongue tip may even be vibrating giving rise to R-colouring.
See Lip rounding in prop-voc.htm.
The lips may either be in their normal position or they may be rounded. The English vowels [u], [ʊ] (U028A), [o], and [ɔ] (U0254) are rounded. The rest are unrounded. (In Canadian English, the sound we have been writing as [ɑ] (U0251) is also often somewhat rounded.) .
This pattern of rounding and unrounding is especially common across languages. But it is logically possible for any tongue body position to co-occur with either rounding or unroundedness. For example, the vowel transcribed as [y] -- the u of French lune [lyn] 'moon' or the ü (U00FC) of German grün [gryn] 'green' -- is nothing more than an [i] pronounced with the lips rounded instead of unrounded.
Many of the parameters for consonants
are also relevant for vowels (e.g., state of the glottis, nasality). Even the
basic constriction parameters can be relevant:
• active articulator -- (tongue body)
• passive articulator -- (hard palate to soft palate)
• constriction degree
Since vowels are partly defined by the highest point reached by the tongue body, it makes sense to think of the tongue body as the active articulator. For high vowels, the tongue body is narrowing the vocal tract, so it makes sense to ask what passive articulator the narrowing is closest to and what the degree of constriction is.
UKT: The "high vowels" are what North Americans mean by "close vowels". The word "high" is referring to the position reached by the tongue body, whereas the word "close" means that the air passage is very "narrow", but not actually being closed, when the sound would be considered to be a consonant.
At present I can only think of two high vowels in Burmese-Myanmar: { i } and {u}. You can test whether they are really "high" by placing your finger over your tong and say{ i. i i:} and
{u. u u:}.
Say{é. é é:} doing the "finger test", and you will see that {é:} may be considered "close", but {é} is not.
For high front vowels, the tongue body approaches the hard palate. For high back vowels, the tongue body approaches the soft palate. The vocal tract is narrowed, but not so much as to cause the airflow to become turbulent -- so the degree of constriction is approximant.
If we wanted to use the consonant parameters for [ i ] and [u], we would have to say:
• [ i ] is a dorso-palatal approximant
• [u] is a dorso-velar approximant
But we already have a dorso-palatal approximant -- [ j ]. We already have a dorso-velar approximant as one half of [w] (it also occurs alone in many languages and is represented by [ɰ] (U0270) ).
UKT:
<by> /baɪ/ (normal form), /bɪ/ (occasional weak form) -- DJPD16 p075)
<my> /maɪ/ (normal form), /mɪ/ (occasional weak form) -- DJPD16 p357.In Burmese-Myanmar {ya.} corresponding to English-Latin <y> is usually considered as an {a.wag} consonant -- not a vowel. However, together with {ya.}, there are three other, all considered to be {a.wag} consonants,
{ya. ra. wa. ha.} which can form medials. Medials are pronounceable conjuncts, whereas all other conjuncts cannot be pronounced. Because of their ability to form pronounceable conjuncts,
In fact, the tongue body positions can be the same for [ i ] and [j]. The only difference is in whether the sound is acting like a vowel (standing in the centre of a syllable) or like a consonant (standing near the edges of a syllable). Glides are vowels masquerading as consonants.
A [ j ] isn't necessarily exactly like [ i ] -- English only seems to care that the tongue position is somewhere in the high or upper mid region:
• [ j ] = [ i ] / [ɪ] / [e]
• [w] = [u] / [ʊ] / [o]
For any dorsal approximant acting as a consonant, we could be very precise about the position of the tongue body by using the appropriate vowel symbol -- we could emphasize the fact that it's acting like a consonant by putting a semicircle (the diacritic meaning "non-syllabic") under the vowel. In a broader transcription, we usually want to ignore details like these and simply use [j] or [w] as a cover symbol.
diphthong n. Linguistics 1. A complex speech sound or glide that begins with one vowel and gradually changes to another vowel within the same syllable, as (oi) in boil or ( ī ) in fine. [Middle English diptonge from Old French diptongue from Late Latin dipthongus from Greek diphthongos di- two; See di- 1 phthongos sound] -- AHTD
A vowel cluster is two or more vowels occurring next to each other in a single syllable with no intervening consonant. Vowel clusters are distinct from diphthongs in that diphthongs are vowel combinations in a single syllable involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another while vowel clusters have a slower rate of change of formant trajectories. -- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_cluster download 070829.
UKT: I taught Chemistry in Myanmar universities in various parts of the country for 33 years. I am a keen observer on the look out for "unusual" pronunciations among thousands of my students. From my observation, I must say that Burmese-Myanmar has no diphthongs. Though I was born into a bilingual family (where both Burmese and English were spoken), I was using mostly monothongs until I first came to the US at age 21. There my classmates "drilled" me to pronounce <oil> and <boy> correctly. I was a university teacher all during my working years except for a year-stay in Australia. After my retirement as a chemistry teacher, I have been living almost continuously in Canada for 20 years interspersed with stays in Myanmar. I have been on the look out for diphthongs, and unusual pronunciations, and I am sure I know what diphthongs are. And so my observation on the absence of diphthongs in Burmese-Myanmar should be essentially correct.
Let us see what the diphthongs are from a British view point.
The following is from a British source: Ted Power, English Language Learning and Teaching, www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/esl0105.html
Why do most learners find diphthongs difficult at first?
There are eight English diphthongs altogether. To make diphthongs,
your tongue, lips (and your jaw on occasions!) have to move. Sometimes the
journey your tongue makes is short and very controlled; in some of the
diphthongs, it has to move a long distance in your mouth, involving a lot of jaw
movement too.
Learners find diphthongs difficult because producing them is a
motor skill (like body building!) which has to be practised in order to obtain a
good result. You cannot succeed in English pronunciation by understanding alone.
The muscles you have to train to make English diphthongs are unlikely to be
identical to those you use in production of vowel sounds in your first language.
Understanding is also important. Although you can train to a
certain extent through repetition (parrot fashion!), you will be able to make
further improvement through awareness of the manner of articulation (e.g. the
absence or presence of lip rounding &/or tension, size of aperture, degree of
jaw movement), the starting and finishing tongue positions, and both the
direction and extent of tongue movement.
Presenting diphthongs - similarities and differences
The English language has twenty vowel sounds. To see all the
English sounds, refer to the
English Phoneme
Chart. The first 12 of the English vowel sounds are monophthongs. The
tongue stays at one fixed location in the mouth to produce each
monophthong.
Sounds 13 to 20, the next eight English vowel sounds, are
diphthongs. They present greater difficulty to people learning English
because the tongue travels between two fixed locations. It is important to know
exactly what to do with the speech organs (i.e. the position of the
tongue, lip-shape & tension, size of mouth opening) in each location and the
manner and direction of the movement.
The first 3 diphthongs have the vowel sound /ɪ/
in <pit> or <if> as the finishing position. To make this sound, your tongue has
to be high and towards the front of your mouth and your lips kept relaxed.
13. /eɪ/ as in <day>, <pay>, <say>, <lay>. The starting
point is /e/ with the tongue in mid position of the mouth as in <egg>,
<bed> or <Ted>. Therefore you move the tongue up to make the diphthong.
14. /ɑɪ/ as in <sky>, <buy>, <cry>, <tie>. The starting
position is /ɑː/, the sound sound as in <car> or the noise "ah" which you
make when you open your mouth at the dentist's. To make the diphthong you need a
big jaw movement, less opening as you move the tongue up and front.
15. /ɔɪ/ as in <boy>, <toy>, <coy>, or the first syllable of
<soya>. The starting position is /ɔː/, the sound in <door> or <or>. Your
tongue needs to be low, but you need to pull it back and make your mouth round.
To make the diphthong, you relax the lip rounding and move your tongue forward
and up.
The next 3 diphthongs have the neutral "schwa" vowel sound /ə/,
which occurs in grunting noises and the weak forms of <the> and <a>, as the
finishing position. To make the neutral vowel sound keep your tongue fixed in
the centre of your mouth, lips fairly relaxed and just grunt!
16. /ɪə/ as in <beer> (the
drink), <pier>, <hear>. The starting position is /ɪ/
as in <if> or <pit> with tongue front and high and lips relaxed.
17. /eə/ as in <bear> (the animal), <pair> and <hair>. The
starting position is /e/ as in <egg> or <bed> with the tongue in mid
position at front of mouth. To make the diphthong, using a small controlled
movement, pull your tongue slightly back from mid-front to mid-central position
in your mouth.
18. /ʊə/ as in <tour>, <poor> (talking posh!) or the first
syllable of <tourist>. The starting position is /ʊ/ with the tongue
pulled back but small mouth aperture as in <hook>, <book> or <look>
To make the diphthong, this time the small controlled tongue
movement goes from the back position to the mid-central position, losing the lip
rounding and relaxing your mouth from the tight starting position.
The last 2 diphthongs have the back vowel /ʊ/ (tongue pulled back but
small tight mouth aperture as in <hook>, <book>, or <look>, as the finishing
position.
19. /əʊ/ as in <oh>, <no>, <so> or <phone>. The starting
position is the neutral vowel sound, also known as "schwa" /ə/, which
sounds like a grunt, as in the weak form of <the> or <a>. To start in this way,
the tongue should be fixed in mid-central position in your mouth with
lips relaxed. To make the diphthong, it is a short controlled movement in the
opposite direction of 5) above: from the centre to the back moving your relaxed
lips into a tighter small round aperture. Your cheeks should move in a bit!
20. /aʊ/ as in all the words of <how>
<now> <brown> <cow>. The starting position is the vowel sound /æ/ as in <at>
<bad> or <rat> with tongue front but also low (i.e. mouth open). To make the
diphthong the journey for your tongue from front low (mouth very open) to back
high (small tight mouth aperture) is a very long excursion. Your jaw will move a
lot too.
UKT: In all advice-giving text, as in the above, we get no substance when the very examples they are asking us to follow like <boy> is not in our ability to pronounce. My advice is just to take the above <diphthongs> as "diphthongs", and to recognise that English language is full of diphthongs, which we as native-born Myanmars whose language is monophthongal, would be unable to pronounce. But do the native English-speakers from all countries pronounce their diphthongs in the same way? The answer is definitely no! To me the so-called "Canadian English" is the best we would be able to emulate.
The following is mainly from a Canadian source -- University of Manitoba.
In simple vowels, or monophthongs, the tongue body has a relatively stable position throughout. But there are other vowels where the tongue body does not stay in one place, even in the most abstract diagrams with artificial slices. Complex vowels which are characterized by movement are called diphthongs.
To transcribe a diphthong, we need two symbols: the first indicating the starting position and the second indicating the finishing position or the direction of movement.
|
|
|
Fig. 2.11 In the English diphthong [aj], the tongue body starts in the position for [a] -- between [æ] (U00E6) and [ɑ] (U0251). Almost immediately, it begins moving upwards and forwards. Occasionally it gets as far as [ i ], but usually only as far as [ɪ] (U026A) or even lower. In a broader transcription, we can ignore the exact position of the end-point and simply use the glide [j] as a cover symbol.
Fig. 2.12 In the English diphthong [aw], the tongue body starts out in the same position (for most Canadian speakers) and moves upwards and backwards, towards [u], [ʊ] (U028A), or [o]. In a broader transcription, we can use the glide [w] as a cover symbol for the end-point. The lips become increasingly rounding throughout the diphthong.
 |
Fig. 2.13 In the diphthong [ ɔj ] (U0254 U006A), the tongue body begins in the position for [ɔ] (U0254) and moves upwards and forwards. The lips become increasing less rounded throughout the diphthong. |
 |
In most dialects of English, the vowels we have been transcribing [e] and [o] also involve an upwards movement of the tongue body. In narrower transcriptions of these dialects, they would be written [ej] and [ow]: |
A tendency to pronounce all tense mid vowels as diphthongs is one of the most noticeable accent features of English-speakers trying to speak other languages.
 |
In many dialects, even the vowels we have been transcribing [i] and [u] have short upwards movements. |
For the rest of this section, we will be looking at more subtle differences between sounds than those we have been interested in for broad transcriptions.
An example: Compare pit and spit. The first consonant of pit has an extra puff of air after it which is not found after the [p] of spit. This extra puff of air can be transcribed with the IPA diacritic for aspiration, a superscript "h" (U02B0):
| <pit> | [pʰɪt] |
 |
|
| <spit> | [spɪt] |
 |
A phoneme is a family of similar sounds which a language treats as being "the same". Members of the family are called its allophones.
In English, [p] and [pʰ] are allophones of the /p/ phoneme.
Switching allophones of the same phoneme won't change the meaning of the word: [spʰIt] still means 'spit'.
Switching allophones of different phonemes will change the meaning of the word or result in a nonsense word: [skIt] and [stIt] do not mean 'spit'.
Different languages can have different groupings for their phonemes. [p] and [ph] belong to the same phoneme in English, but to different phonemes in Chinese. In Chinese, switching [p] and [ph] does change the meaning of the word.
A broad transcription uses only one symbol for all allophones of the same phoneme. This is enough information to distinguish a word from other words of the language. What details you have to include in a broad transcription will depend on what language or dialect you are transcribing.
Broad transcription is good enough for many purposes.
For second-language learners or people
undergoing treatment for language disorders, the first major goal is to be able
to make the same contrasts that the rest of the speech community does. E.g.,
• English contrasts like hit and heat, or hit and hid.
• French contrasts like [lu] loup 'wolf' and [ly] lu 'read', or
the nasalization contrast between sec 'dry' and cinq 'five'.
It's usually more important to pronounce the pairs of words differently than it is to pronounce either word perfectly.
The minimal contrasts expressed in
broad transcriptions aren't good enough if:
• you want an even better accent in a second language.
• the problem is you're pronouncing the contrasts, but not noticeably enough for
listeners to hear the difference.
• you want to do linguistic research
- on a new language, where you don't know ahead of time what the phoneme
groupings will be
- on dialect differences, where most of the interesting differences will be
too small to change meanings
People don't make different sounds in different contexts because they're bored and have nothing better to do with their time. The small differences make sense.
Two examples from Rogers of allophonic
differences:
• Voiceless consonants are longer at the end of a word than are voiced
consonants. E.g., [nIp:] vs. [nIb], [rejt:] vs. [rejd]
• Vowels are longer before a voiced sound than before a voiceless sound.
Try to say a very long [p]. Now try to say a very long [b], keeping your vocal cords vibrating -- you'll quickly progress from normal through chipmunk to balloon. It makes sense that you not try to say voiced oral stops for as long as you say voiceless ones.
Equally stressed syllables tend to take up about the same amount of time. If a final voiced consonant is shorter, that's more time for the vowel to take up:
| <nip> | [nIp] | [nɪp] |
 |
| <nib> | [nIb] | [nɪb] |
 |
1. Make life easy for your mouth.
2. Make life easy for your listener.
You can't always satisfy both goals at once. When pronouncing hid, you want your listener to be able to tell that you aren't saying hit, so prolonging the final [d] might be helpful. But you want to accomplish this with the least effort possible, and prolonging the final [d] will turn you into a chipmunk.
Several of the small contextual differences between allophones can be seen as attempts to satisfy one or both of these goals.
Assimilation is when a sound becomes
more like its environment. E.g.,
• In many languages, a stop becomes voiced between two (voiced) vowels
• In English, a vowel is somewhat nasal before a nasal consonant, and very nasal
between two nasal consonants.
For the speaker: assimilation keeps the articulators from having to make the sudden fast movements that would be required if the idealized slicing view of segments were true. For the listener: spreading a feature like voicing or nasality out over a longer period of time can often make it easier to hear (though it can also destroy contrasts that used to be in the segments that changed).
Speakers will often simultaneously do
things which have similar acoustic effects.
E.g., the R sound in English is really usually pronounced with three gestures:
1. an apico-postalveolar approximant, [ɹ] (U0279)
2. slight lip rounding
3. a slight constriction of the throat (a radico-pharyngeal approximant).
All three gestures have a similar acoustic effect and reinforce or enhance each other.
For the speaker: it may seem harder to do three gestures than one, but each of the three can be smaller and less obtrusive than if one were used alone. For the listener: exaggerating the acoustic effect makes it harder to mistake.
For people with some physical problems, there's often no choice but to use different gestures that have similar acoustic effects.
Listeners will pay attention to all
relevant information that can help distinguish sounds. In deciding whether a
final stop is voiced, a listener won't just listen for vocal cord vibration, but
for:
• vocal cord vibration
• the pitch of the preceding vowel
• the relative lengths of the vowel and consonant
• the transition between the vowel and consonant
among other things. (In some situations, the relative length of the consonant
and vowel can be a more reliable cue than whether you hear vocal cord
vibration.)
In cases of enhancing gestures or of features with multiple cues, children often focus on the wrong one. E.g., [wæbət] instead of [ɹæbət]; a child who substitutes a short [ʔ] (U0294) for all final voiced stops and a long [ʔː] (U0294 U02D) for all voiceless ones.
A complete stop involves three
"phases":
1. approach
2. closure
3. release
An extreme idealized picture of segment slicing pretends that the stop is its closure phase.
Normally, once the active and passive articulators have cut off the airflow by touching, they have to move apart again and let the airflow resume.
Unreleased stops
-- "corner diacritic'
Many languages require their stops to be released. English doesn't. It's possible to release the final stop in an utterance, e.g., That's my cat, but it's not necessary. Because it's not necessary, it usually doesn't happen.
IPA marks an unreleased stop or a stop
whose release can't be heard with the "corner" diacritic:
The absence of a release is even more
obvious in a compound word like catnip. Here, the tongue tip touches the
alveolar ridge at the beginning of the [t] and stays there all the way through
to the end of the [n]:
The same situation occurs in words like button and widen. In normal speech, there is no vowel in the second syllable of these words -- the airflow remains blocked at the alveolar ridge throughout the entire syllable.
In situations like this, it is often (unfortunately) said that the stop is nasally released. There are also lateral releases: in a word like bottle, the tongue tip doesn't completely leave the alveolar ridge after the [t], only the sides of the tongue drop down to form the following [l].
Overlapping
In an ideal world (for listeners),
every stop would be released before the next segment began. In English clusters
of stops, the first stop is usually not released till after the second stop is
in its closure phase. This means:
• There's a brief period of time where there are two closures.
• You can't hear the first release -- by the time the first stop is ready to let
the airflow move again, there's already a blockage somewhere else in the mouth.
Situations like this are typically diagrammed as follows:
UKT: The above figure appears to show the overlapping in <apt> .
As well as varying one of the
parameters (e.g., passive articulator), there can be variations in timing:
• of one consonant relative the other sounds
• between constriction gestures within a consonant
• between a constriction gesture and glottal activity or nasality
Overlapping
One example is the kind of overlapping we have already seen between the closure phases of [p] and [t] in apt or [k] and [t] in doctor.
Taps
The second consonant in words like
city or butter is quite different from an ordinary [t].
• It is extremely fast.
• The closure phase is so brief that the vocal cords usually don't have enough
time to stop vibrating, then start again for the following vowel. (Often they
don't even try.)
This kind of constriction is called a
tap. It is usually treated as a minor type of constriction degree
(alongside stop, fricative, etc.) and given a separate row in consonant charts.
The IPA symbol for an alveolar tap is a lower-case [r] without the upper serif.
[ɾ]
(U027E)
UKT: (U027E)
is described in the .pdf page "IPA Extensions Range: 0250-02AF" as "• voiced
alveolar flap or tap.")
For example: city:
| <city> | [ˈsɪɾi] |
 |
Rogers contrasts a tapped-t with an ordinary stop [d], but it is common for d's to be tapped in English as well. There is often no difference in the alveolar constriction between latter and ladder, or futile and feudal. Even when the vocal cords fail to stop vibrating during the "voiceless" tap, this usually doesn't make the words identical in Canadian English: the secondary cues to consonant voicing are still there, e.g., effects on the pitch and length of the preceding vowel.
Aspiration
The vocal cords need not turn on and
off at exactly the same instant that a stop closure is created or released.
There can be different timing relationships between vocal cord vibration and
stop closure:
• vibration occurs throughout the closure (fully voiced)
• vibration begins during the closure (partially voiced)
• vibration begins simultaneously with the release (voiceless unaspirated)
• vibration begins after the release (voiceless aspirated)
The last three are illustrated in Rogers' Figure 3.3:
These possibilities are referred to as Voice Onset Time (VOT). Stops transcribed as "voiced" and "voiceless" in a broad transcription can have different VOTs in different contexts and in different languages.
Voiced stops in French are typically fully voiced. English voiced stops are often fully voiced between vowels, but usually only partially voiced (and sometimes even voiceless unaspirated).
Voiceless stops in French are typically unaspirated (i.e., no delay between the release and the onset of voicing). Voiceless stops in English are unaspirated in some contexts (e.g., after an [s]) and aspirated in others (e.g., at the beginning of a stressed syllable).
In English, the delay in voice onset after an aspirated stop will occur whether the following sound is a vowel or a consonant. If the following sound is a consonant, it will become (at least partially) voiceless:
plum 
Rogers tries to explain many co-occurrence restrictions in English as resulting from the tense/lax contrast. But his generalizations are subject to a great deal of dialect variation and there are a number of exceptions (e.g., "only lax vowels before [ ʃ ]"). (U0283)
For example, there is no contrast between [i] and [ɪ] (U026A) before [ɹ] (U0279), or between [u] and [ʊ] (U028A), or [e] and [ɛ] (U025B). Rogers argues that it must be the tense vowel that occurs in this environment, assuming that all vowels before [ɹ] (U0279) must have the same tenseness and that diphthongs are tense.
There is in fact a great deal of dialect variability in this. In my own speech, can only occur after lax vowels (or occur syllabically):
| <peer> | [pɪɹ] |
 |
| <pear> | [pɛɹ] |
 |
| <poor> | [pʊɹ] or [pɔɹ] |
or
 |
| <pour> | [pɔɹ] |
|
| <par> | [pɑɹ] |
 |
| <purr> | [pˌɹ] |
 |
(So my phonological system must treat [ɑ] (U0251) as a lax vowel.) [ɹ] (U0279) cannot occur after diphthongs, but must be syllabic in a second syllable:
| <pyre> | [pajˌɹ] |
 |
| <power> | [pawˌɹ] |
 |
A "dark" L is a voiced, oral consonant
made with two constriction gestures:
1. a alveolar lateral approximant [l]
2. a dorso-velar approximant [ɰ] (U0270)
We could symbolize by putting the "velarized" diacritc after [l], but it's a common enough sound to have a special symbol: [ɫ] (U026B).
Warning: Don't confuse this with the voiceless lateral fricative symbol, [ɬ] (U026C).
• The dark (velarized) L symbol has a simple ~ squiggle through it. You have to take your pen off the page in order to write it.
• The voiceless lateral fricative symbol loops back and crosses itself. You can write it without taking your pen off the page.
Remember to try the calligraphy exercises in the back of Rogers.
UKT: After listening to the sound files from UCLA and UNIL, both Daw Than Than and I have come to the conclusion that [ɬ] (U026C) has the same sound as the Bamah <lha.> ( vS) (literal meaning: "beautiful".)
Why would it make sense to use dark L after back vowels?
In many dialects of Canadian English, the diphthongs of the noun house and the verb house are different.
| <house> (verb) | [hawz] |
 |
| <house> (noun) | [hʌws] |
 |
A similar difference exists between eyes and ice:
| <eyes> | [ajz] |
 |
| <ice> | [ʌjs] |
 |
Before
voiceless consonants, the starting point of the diphthongs is raised from [a] to
[ʌ] (U028C).
Why does it make sense for this raising to happen before voiceless consonants rather than before voiced?
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_vowel download 070923
A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages.
The defining characteristic of a "close vowel" is that the tongue is positioned
as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction
that would be classified as a consonant.
This term (UKT: i.e. the close vowel) is prescribed by the IPA. Close vowels are often referred to as high vowels, as in the Americanist phonetic tradition, because the tongue is positioned high in the mouth during the articulation of a close vowel.
The six close vowels identified within the IPA are:
• close front unrounded vowel [ i ]
• close front rounded vowel [y]
• close central unrounded vowel [ ɨ ]
• close central rounded vowel [ ʉ ]
• close back unrounded vowel [ɯ]
• close back rounded vowel [u]
In the context of the phonology of any particular language, a high vowel can be any vowel that is more close than a mid vowel. That is, close-mid vowels, near-close vowels, and close vowels can all be considered high vowels.
UKT: The IPA description such as "close-mid" and "near-close" are ambiguous. I would propose a scale of height: open = 0 and close = 6. The intermediate "closeness" on this scale, such as "close-mid" = h4/6, "near-close" = h5/6, and schwa = h3/6.
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonation download 070909
UKT: The article is in 4 sections: 1. Voicing; 2. Phonation as the state of the glottis (2.1 Unaccompanied phonation; 2.2 Register); 3. Supra-glottal phonation; 4. Phonation in familiar languages. I have split up the Wiki article into two:
• phonation (consisting of 1 and 2 of the original sections
• Supra-glottal phonation (consisting of 3 and 4 of above)
In phonetics, phonation is the "use of the
laryngeal system
to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i.e., sound, which can then be
modified by the articulatory actions of the rest of the vocal apparatus."
Phonation has traditionally been seen as one dimension of phonetic
voicing, the degree of
glottal
tension. (A second dimension of voicing is timing, called voice onset time (VOT). When a sound is described as "half voiced",
it may not be clear whether it is quality (phonation) or quantity (VOT) that is
referred to.)
However, with recent advances in imaging technology, it has become
apparent that in many languages phonation involves more than just the glottis.
A voiced sound is produced when air expelled from the lungs causes the
vocal folds to vibrate. This produces a fundamental tone accompanied by several
non-harmonic overtones. The resulting sound is modified by movements in the
vocal
tract, by the volume of the airflow and by the degree of constriction of the
vocal cords. (During speech the flow of air is relatively small because of
constrictions of the vocal cords.)
Vowels are
usually voiced, as are many
consonants.
If the vocal folds are lax and not sufficiently close to vibrate,
then the sound (usually a
consonant)
is voiceless.
The vocal vibration is varied to produce
intonation and
tone. This is accomplished by varying the pressure of the air column under
the glottis as well as the tension in the vocal folds themselves. These actions
produce changes in the frequency of vocal-cord vibration, which generates the
fundamental pitch of the voice. Tone and intonation are not conveyed well by
voiceless sounds, with their lax vocal folds, but the changes in airflow are
still audible.
Phonation as the state of the glottis:
In classic treatments of phonation, such as those of Peter Ladefoged,
phonation was considered to be a matter of points on a continuum of tension and
closure of the vocal cords. More intricate mechanisms were occasionally
described, but they were difficult to investigate, and until recently the state
of the glottis and phonation were considered to be nearly synonymous.
If the vocal cords are completely relaxed, with the arytenoid
cartilages apart for maximum airflow, the cords do not vibrate. This is
voiceless phonation, and is extremely common with
obstruents.
If the arytenoids are pressed together for glottal closure, the vocal
cords block the airstream, producing stop sounds such as the
glottal
stop. In between there is a
sweet spot
of maximum vibration. This is modal voice, and is the normal state for
vowels and
sonorants in all the world's languages. However, the aperture of the
arytenoid cartilages, and therefore the tension in the vocal cords, is one of
degree between the end points of open and closed, and there are several
intermediate situations utilized by various languages to make contrasting
sounds.
For example,
Gujarati has vowels with a partially lax phonation called
breathy voice or murmured, while
Burmese has vowels with a partially tense phonation called
creaky
voice or laryngealized. Both of these phonations have dedicated
IPA diacritics, an under-umlaut and under-tilde. The Jalapa dialect of
Mazatec is
unusual in contrasting both with modal voice in a three-way distinction. (Note
that Mazatec is a tonal language, so the glottis is making several tonal
distinctions simultaneously with the phonation distinctions.)
Mazatec: breathy voice [ja̤] (he wears) ; modal voice [já] (tree) ; creaky voice [ja̰] (he carries)
-- Wiki's note: There was an editing error in the source of this information. The latter two translations may have been mixed up.
Javanese does not have modal voice in its
plosives, but
contrasts two other points along the phonation scale, with more moderate
departures from modal voice, called
slack
voice and
stiff
voice. The "muddy" consonants in
Shanghainese are slack voice; they contrast with tenuis and aspirated
consonants.
Although each language may be somewhat different, it is convenient
to classify these degrees of phonation into discrete categories. A series of
seven alveolar plosives, with phonations ranging from an open/lax to a
closed/tense glottis, are:
[d̤] breathy voice ; [d̥] slack voiceOpen glottis: [t] voiceless (full airstream) ;
The IPA diacritics under-ring and subscript wedge, commonly called "voiceless" and "voiced", are sometimes added to the symbol for a voiced sound to indicate more lax/open (slack) and tense/closed (stiff) states of the glottis, respectively. (Ironically, adding the 'voicing' diacritic to the symbol for a voiced consonant indicates less modal voicing, not more, because a modally voiced sound is already fully voiced, at its sweet spot, and any further tension in the vocal cords dampens their vibration.)
Unaccompanied phonation: It has long been noted that, both phonologically and historically, the glottal consonants [ʔ, ɦ, h] do not behave like other consonants. Phonetically, they have no manner or place of articulation other than the state of the glottis: glottal closure for [ʔ], breathy voice for [ɦ], and open airstream for [h]. Some phoneticians have described these sounds as neither glottal nor consonantal, but instead as instances of pure phonation.
Register: Many languages combine phonation and tone into a single phonological system. In Mazatec, tone and phonation have separate lives, so that all possible combinations of its several tones and phonations can be utilized to distinguish words, but Burmese tones do not contrast directly in this way. Rather each Burmese tone occurs only with a specific phonation that serves to make it more distinctive — or, from a different point of view, Burmese tone serves to make the phonations more distinct. These tone-phonation hybrids are called registers.
Go back phonation-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonation download 070909
UKT: The article is in 4 sections: 1. Voicing; 2. Phonation as the state of the glottis (2.1 Unaccompanied phonation; 2.2 Register); 3. Supra-glottal phonation; 4. Phonation in familiar languages. I have split up the Wiki article into two:
• phonation (consisting of 1 and 2 of the original sections
• Supra-glottal phonation (consisting of 3 and 4 of above)
Supra-glottal phonation: In the last few decades it has become apparent that phonation may involve the entire larynx, with as many as six valves and muscles working either independently or together. From the glottis upward, these articulations are[1]
Until the development of
fiber-optic
laryngoscopy, the full involvement of the larynx during speech production
was not observable, and the interactions among the six laryngeal articulators is
still poorly understood. However, at least two supra-glottal phonations appear
to be widespread in the world's languages. These are
harsh
voice ('ventricular' or 'pressed' voice), which involves overall
constriction of the larynx, and
faucalized voice ('hollow' or 'yawny' voice), which involves overall
expansion of the larynx.
The Bor dialect of
Dinka has contrastive modal, breathy, faucalized, and harsh voice in its
vowels, as well as three tones. The ad hoc diacritics employed in the
literature are a subscript double quotation mark for faucalized voice,
[a͈], and underlining for
harsh voice, [a].
Examples are:
Bor Dinka: modal [ʨìt̪] (diarrhea) ; breathy [ʨì̤t] (go ahead); harsh [ʨìt̪] (scorpions) ; faucalized [ʨì͈t] (to swallow )
Other languages with these contrasts are
Bai
(modal, breathy, and harsh voice),
Kabiye (faucalized and harsh voice, previously seen as
±ATR),
Somali (breathy and harsh voice).
Elements of laryngeal articulation or phonation may occur widely in
the world's languages as phonetic detail even when not phonemically contrastive.
For example, simultaneous glottal, ventricular, and arytenoid activity (for
something other than
epiglottal consonants) has been observed in
Tibetan,
Korean,
Nuuchahnulth,
Nlaka’pamux,
Thai,
Sui,
Amis,
Pame,
Arabic,
Tigrinya,
Cantonese, and
Yi.
Phonation in familiar languages: In languages such as French, all
obstruents
occur in pairs, one modally voiced and one voiceless.
In English, every voiced
fricative
corresponds to a voiceless one. For the pairs of English
plosives, however, the distinction is better specified as
voice onset time rather than simply voice: In initial position /b d g/ are
only partially voiced (voicing begins during the hold of the consonant), while
/p t k/ are
aspirated (voicing doesn't begin until well after its release).
Certain English
morphemes
have voiced and voiceless
allomorphs,
such as the plural, verbal, and possessive endings spelled -s (voiced in
kids /kɪdz/ but
voiceless in kits /kɪts/)
and the past-tense ending spelled -ed (voiced in buzzed
/bʌzd/ but voiceless in
fished /fɪʃt/.
A few European languages, such as
Finnish or
Alemannic, have no phonemically voiced
obstruents
but pairs of long and short consonants instead. Outside of Europe, a lack of
voicing distinctions is not uncommon; indeed, in
Australian languages it is nearly universal.
End of Wiki article.
Go back phonation-supraglottal-b
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme download 070908
A phoneme can include slightly different sounds or phones. For instance, the p sound in the words <pin> and <spin> is pronounced differently, but is still considered the single /p/ phoneme. Two phones that belong to the same phoneme are called allophones. A common test to determine whether two phones are allophones or separate phones relies on finding so-called minimal pairs: words that differ only by the phones in question.
UKT: <pin> is pronounced as /{hping}/ the basic akshara being {hpa.}. On the other hand <p> in <spin> is pronounced as /{sâping}/ with the basic akshara {pa.}. In English, the <p> in <pin> and <spin> are 'allophones', but in Burmese-Myanmar {pa.} and {hpa.} are different phones.
Go back phonemic-distinction-b
supra·glottal adj. 1. Above or anterior to the glottis. 2. Linguistics Designating a phone or phoneme produced by the speech organs anterior to the glottis. -- AHTD
The human voice production system consists not
only of the supra-glottal area (vocal tract), but also the sub-glottal area
(containing diaphragm, trachea and lungs), larynx (containing vocal folds).
--
http://dea.brunel.ac.uk/cmsp/Home_Emir_Turajlic/introduction.html download
070818
Go back supra-glottal-b
UKT: from Introduction to Voice Quality, http://dea.brunel.ac.uk/cmsp/Home_Emir_Turajlic/introduction.html download 070818
Definition: Perceived
characteristic ‘acoustic coloring’ of voice, derived from a variety of laryngeal
and supra-laryngeal features that are not unique to one individual but form
clusters of identifiable voice types. Examples of voice types:
• Modal voice • Breathy voice • Pressed voice • Creaky voice • Tense voice •
Harsh voice • Nasal voice
UKT: There's no doubt I must have heard all the above voice types. Do I know which is which? No. The following online links will let you hear the voice types. From: http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page10.htm
• Whisper: Whisper sound quality is produced through turbulences generated by the friction of the air in and above the larynx with vocal folds not vibrating. <)) (WAV file, 10 kB) . Apart from the rather seldom linguistic uses, whisper is widely used paralinquistically to signal secrecy and confidentiality.
• Modal voice: The neutral mode of phonation is modal voiced phonation. <)) (WAV file, 16 kB). The modal phonation of a male speaker occurs at an average of 120 Hz, while for a female speaker it is approx. 220 Hz.
• Breathy voice: It is normally regarded as a compound phonation type (voiceless +modal). <)) (WAV file, 17 kB) . Vocal fold vibration is inefficient and, because of the incomplete closure of the glottis, a constant glottal leakage occurs which causes the production of audible friction noise. The vibration frequency is just below the value of typical modal voice.
• Creaky voice: Creak phonation (also called vocal fry) <)) (WAV file, 16 kB) is also produced with vibrating vocal folds but at a very low frequency.
• Harsh voice: It is due to the very strong tension of the vocal folds (especially medial compression and adductive tension), which results in an excessive approximation of the vocal folds. <)) (WAV file, 18 kB). When the whole larynx is subjected to this extremely high tension, the upper larynx becomes highly constricted with the ventricular folds pressing on the upper surfaces of the vocal folds, making their vibration ineffective. Harsh phonation is therefore irregular in both cycle duration and amplitude. The characteristic frequency is above 100 Hz. A lighter degree of tension is sometimes described as a tense voice.
• Falsetto: The frequency of vibrations in falsetto phonation is noticeably higher than in modal voice. <)) (WAV file, 8 kB). The vocal folds are stretched longitudinally, thus becoming relatively thin. Consequently, the vibrating mass is smaller and the generated tone higher. The adduction of the folds is high and the medial compression is also strong. The glottis often remains slightly open, resulting in low subglottal pressure (due to constant glottal leakage) and the generation of the audible friction noise component.
Not all phonation types are mutually exclusive, on the contrary, some of them work together to modify phonation. Only modal and falsetto are incompatible because they use the structure of the larynx differently.
Voice quality is an effect of vocal tract anatomy, laryngeal anatomy and vocal habits.
This is illustrated in the following examples. The characteristic sound of the voice is brought about by the mode of vibration of the vocal cords and folds.
Differences in the degree and manner of glottal closure distinguish modal voice, breathy voice and whispery voice. The quality of the voice depends on the degree of tension in the larynx and pharynx, and on the vertical displacement of the larynx: a raised larynx produces a thin tense voice, and a lowered larynx a booming voice.
Perceptual importance: In English, apart from distinguishing voiced and voiceless sounds, voice quality does not make linguistic contrasts, but conveys information about the speaker. In some languages such as Gujerati and Mazatec differences in voice quality or pitch trajectory are used to convey linguistic meanings. Languages and dialects have characteristic voice qualities; personal voice quality enables a listener to recognize a particular individual. Furthermore, the quality of someone's voice also conveys emotions and attitudes.
Anatomy of human voice:
In order to understand different voice types it is beneficial to link them to
the voice producing anatomy. For this purpose the author of the website will
refer to myoelastic aerodynamic theory of vocal fold vibrations. Figure 1 shows
a model of human voice production system. It is consisted of the sub-glottal
area (containing diaphragm, trachea and lungs), larynx (containing vocal folds)
and supra-glottal area (vocal tract). The vocal folds are made of muscles
tendon and mucous, and are of variable mass and elasticity. In-between the
fold, the glottis of variable geometric properties controls the airflow towards
the vocal tract. For the informative purpose only: Above the vocal folds there
is a pair of what is commonly referred to as fake vocal folds but they are
rarely used and hence are not considered in this project. Vocal tract is
consisted of oral and nasal cavity, pharyngeal cavity and larynx tube. The human
voice is a series of puffs of air separated by (partial) closure of the vocal
folds between each puff. Voice is thereby produced by the vibrations of the
vocal folds activated by the air pressure from the lungs and is characterised by
the shape and the physiology of the vocal folds and larynx.
During the phonation cycle air pressure from the lungs builds up under
closed vocal folds. Built up air pressure forces vocal folds to open and
release air. Vocal folds close due to their elasticity and a sudden drop in
pressure. The air pressure builds up and the cycle is repeated.
The main factors affecting the vibrations are:
• Pressure and airflow: The respiratory system
• Active muscle contraction and position of arytenoid cartilages
• Elastic properties of vocal folds, mass length and elasticity
So phonation can be defined as a self-sustaining quasi-periodic oscillation of vocal folds that arises from the interaction of muscular aerodynamic forces in the vocal tract. A single cycle of opening and closing is at 100Hz rate for a male speaker. As such it is too rapid for the human ear to be able to discriminate each individual cycle of oscillations. However, we are sensitive to the change in overall rate of vibration and perceive it as changes in the pitch of the voice.
The intrinsic muscles of the larynx may be categorised by function:
their effect on the shape of the glottis and on the vibratory behaviour
of vocal folds. The following are the basic features of laryngeal adjustments
to the different phonological settings:
a) abduction or adduction of vocal folds,
b) constriction of supra-glottal structures-adjustment of length,
c) stiffness and thickness of the vocal folds,
d) elevation and lowering of larynx.
The glottal flow excites the vocal tract resonator. Vocal tract provides two paths for the excitation air flow, through nasal and/or oral cavity. This is controlled by velum. The more open it is, the more nasal the sound. Velum together with other articulators (lips, tongue and jaw) controls the spectral shape of the resonator. It is important to be aware that source excitation and the vocal tract are not linearly independent systems. ... ...
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End of TIL file.
