Lotto A J, Holt L L, Kluender K R
University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA.
Phonetica. 1997;54(2):76-93. doi: 10.1159/000262212.
Across a variety of languages, phonation type and vocal-tract shape systematically covary in vowel production. Breathy phonation tends to accompany vowels produced with a raised tongue body and/or advanced tongue root. A potential explanation for this regularity, based on a hypothesized interaction between the acoustic effects of vocal-tract shape and phonation type, is evaluated. It is suggested that increased spectral tilt and first-harmonic amplitude resulting from breathy phonation interact with the lower-frequency first formant resulting from a raised tongue body to produce a perceptually 'higher' vowel. To test this hypothesis, breathy and modal versions of vowel series modelled after male and female productions of English vowel pairs /i/ and /i/, /u/ and /[symbol: see text]/, and /lamda/ and /a/ were synthesized. Results indicate that for most cases, breathy voice quality led to more tokens being identified as the higher vowel (i.e. /i/, /u/, /lamda/). In addition, the effect of voice quality is greater for vowels modelled after female productions. These results are consistent with a hypothesized perceptual explanation for the covariation of phonation type and tongue-root advancement in West African languages. The findings may also be relevant to gender differences in phonation type.
在多种语言中，发声类型和声道形状在元音发音中系统地共同变化。呼气发声往往伴随着舌体抬高和/或舌根前移时发出的元音。基于声道形状和发声类型的声学效应之间的假设相互作用，对这种规律性的一种可能解释进行了评估。研究表明，呼气发声导致的频谱倾斜增加和基波振幅与舌体抬高导致的低频第一共振峰相互作用，产生一种在感知上“更高”的元音。为了验证这一假设，合成了以男性和女性发英语元音对/i/和/i/、/u/和/[符号：见原文]/以及/lamda/和/a/为蓝本的元音系列的呼气和模态版本。结果表明，在大多数情况下，呼气音质导致更多的音被识别为较高的元音（即/i/、/u/、/lamda/）。此外，对于以女性发音为蓝本的元音，音质的影响更大。这些结果与对西非语言中发声类型和舌根前移共同变化的一种假设性感知解释一致。这些发现也可能与发声类型的性别差异有关。
