Towards models of phonation

doi:10.1006/jpho.2001.0146

Journal of Phonetics

Volume 29, Issue 4, October 2001, Pages 451-480

https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.2001.0146 Get rights and content

Abstract

The earliest models of phonation were based on the assumption that the glottis is closed during a part of the vibration cycle, that is, the phonation is modal. Nonmodal phonation, however, commonly occurs not only for disordered voice but also for normal voices, which often exhibit a breathy quality or irregular vibration. In this paper, we review recent work that examines acoustic data and models of nonmodal phonation in both normal and disordered voice. We first describe acoustic models that predict how the glottal source varies from modal phonation to phonation resulting from glottal configurations that are partially abducted, including a posterior glottal opening. These models are applied first to vowels of nondisordered adults, and, later in the paper, to vowels produced by adults with dysarthria. We also present results from a study in which a modified version of the two-mass model is used to resolve a seeming conflict among aerodynamic and acoustic data collected from adult female subjects with vocal-fold nodules. Some discussion of nonmodal phenomena that occur due to prosodic and emotional influences is included. Overall, it appears that current models of modal phonation can be extended to include a range of nonmodal phonation types.

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Theoretical achievements of phonetics in the 21st century: Phonetics of voice quality
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Citation Excerpt :
Considering the acoustic indexes, the AVQI score does not differ by gender, independently of the recording type, which confirms previous conclusions in the literature.95–97 The ABI, however, is higher in women – both in the AKG and in the telephone recordings –, which is consistent with the knowledge of an incomplete posterior glottal closure in women,98–101 hence inducing a breathier voice quality. Surprisingly, in the original validation study of the ABI,62 the authors include both men and women in their cohort, but do not investigate possible gender differences.
To investigate the impact of standardized mobile phone recordings passed through a telecom channel on acoustic markers of voice quality and on its perception by voice experts in normophonic speakers.
Continuous speech and a sustained vowel were recorded for fourteen female and ten male normophonic speakers. The recordings were done simultaneously with a head-mounted high-quality microphone and through the telephone network on a receiving smartphone. Twenty-two acoustic voice quality, breathiness and pitch-related measures were extracted from the recordings. Nine vocologists perceptually rated the G, R and B parameters of the GRBAS scale on each voice sample. The reproducibility, the recording type, the stimulus type and the gender effects, as well as the correlation between acoustic and perceptual measures were investigated.
The sustained vowel samples are damped after one second. Only the frequencies between 100 and 3700Hz are passed through the telecom channel and the frequency response is characterized by peaks and troughs. The acoustic measures show a good reproducibility over the three repetitions. All measures significantly differ between the recording types, except for the local jitter, the harmonics-to-noise ratio by Dejonckere and Lebacq, the period standard deviation and all six pitch measures. The AVQI score is higher in telephone recordings, while the ABI score is lower. Significant differences between genders are also found for most of the measures; while the AVQI is similar in men and women, the ABI is higher in women in both recording types. For the perceptual assessment, the interrater agreement is rather low, while the reproducibility over the three repetitions is good. Few significant differences between recording types are observed, except for lower breathiness ratings on telephone recordings. G ratings are significantly more severe on the sustained vowel on both recording types, R ratings only on telephone recordings. While roughness is rated higher in men on telephone recordings by most experts, no gender effect is observed for breathiness on either recording types. Finally, neither the AVQI nor the ABI yield strong correlations with any of the perceptual parameters.
Our results show that passing a voice signal through a telecom channel induces filter and noise effects that limit the use of common acoustic voice quality measures and indexes. The AVQI and ABI are both significantly impacted by the recording type. The most reliable acoustic measures seem to be pitch perturbation (local jitter and period standard deviation) as well as the harmonics-to-noise ratio from Dejonckere and Lebacq. Our results also underline that raters are not equally sensitive to the various factors, including the recording type, the stimulus type and the gender effects. Neither of the three perceptual parameters G, R and B seem to be reliably measurable on telephone recordings using the two investigated acoustic indexes. Future studies investigating the impact of voice quality in telephone conversations should thus focus on acoustic measures on continuous speech samples that are limited to the frequency response of the telecom channel and that are not too sensitive to environmental and additive noise.
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The current study investigated the contribution of different acoustic dimensions to tonal contrasts in Pahari, an understudied language in the Pakistan-administrated part of Kashmir. While previous research on the tonal languages of the region focused only on overall pitch patterns, the present study analyzed fundamental frequency (F₀), duration, intensity and phonation type. Monosyllabic lexical words that form minimal triplets with identical CV structures were recorded from eight native speakers. Detailed acoustic analyses showed that Pahari is tonal at the lexical level with three distinct tones, High, Mid and Low, characterized by high-falling, mid-level and low-rising F₀ contours respectively. The study established that five acoustic cues jointly contribute to the lexical tonal contrast in Pahari. The height of F₀ is the most salient and final velocity helps to distinguish the Low tone from the other two tones. Intensity and phonation help to distinguish the Low tone from the Mid tone and duration helps to distinguish the High tone from the Mid and Low tones. It is concluded that Pahari has a three-way tonal contrast realized with multiple phonetic cues. The multiplicity of cues for the tonal contrast in the language raises interesting questions about the notion of distinctive features and the principle of economy of representation.

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Regular ArticlesTowards models of phonation

Abstract

Journal of Voice

Journal of Phonetics

Journal of Phonetics

Journal of Phonetics

Investigation of phonation using excised larynges

Variability in glottalization of word onset vowels in American English

Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, ICPhS ’95

Acoustic theory of speech production

Glottal characteristics of female speakers

Glottal characteristics of female speakers: acoustic correlates

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Glottal characteristics of male speakers: acoustic correlates and comparison with female data

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Objective assessment of vocal hyperfunction: an experimental framework and initial results

Journal of Speech and Hearing Research

Glottal airflow and transglottal air pressure measurements for male and female speakers in soft, normal and loud voice

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Relationships between intra-speaker variation in aerodynamic measures of voice production and variation in SPL across repeated recordings

Journal of Speech and Hearing Research

Comparisons among aerodynamic, electroglottographic, and acoustic spectral measures of female voice

Journal of Speech and Hearing Research

Estimation of formant bandwidths from measurements of transient response of the vocal tract

Journal of Speech and Hearing Research

Synthesis of voiced sounds from a two-mass model of the vocal cords

Bell System Technical Journal

The dysarthrias: speech-voice profiles, related dysfunctions, and neuropathology

Journal of Medical Speech-Language Pathology

Analysis, synthesis, and perception of voice quality variations among female and male talkers

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Regular Articles
Towards models of phonation