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18 pages, 3932 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Phonation Patterns in Spanish Vowels: Spectral and Spectrographic Analysis

by Carolina González, Susan L. Cox and Gabrielle R. Isgar

Languages 2024, 9(6), 214; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9060214 - 12 Jun 2024

Viewed by 2067

This article provides a detailed examination of voice quality in word-final vowels in Spanish. The experimental task involved the pronunciation of words in two prosodic contexts by native Spanish speakers from diverse dialects. A total of 400 vowels (10 participants × 10 words × 2 contexts × 2 repetitions) were analyzed acoustically in Praat. Waveforms and spectrograms were inspected visually for voice, creak, breathy voice, and devoicing cues. In addition, the relative amplitude difference between the first two harmonics (H1–H2) was obtained via FFT spectra. The findings reveal that while creaky voice is pervasive, breathy voice is also common, and devoicing occurs in 11% of tokens. We identify multiple phonation types (up to three) within the same vowel, of which modal voice followed by breathy voice was the most common combination. While creaky voice was more frequent overall for males, modal voice tended to be more common in females. In addition, creaky voice was significantly more common at the end of higher prosodic constituents. The analysis of spectral tilt shows that H1–H2 clearly distinguishes breathy voice from modal voice in both males and females, while H1–H2 values consistently discriminate creaky and modal voice in male participants only. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phonetics and Phonology of Ibero-Romance Languages)

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19 pages, 5769 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Utterance-Final Voice Quality in American English and Mexican Spanish Bilinguals

by Claudia Duarte-Borquez, Maxine Van Doren and Marc Garellek

Languages 2024, 9(3), 70; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9030070 - 21 Feb 2024

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3166

Abstract

We investigate utterance-final voice quality in bilinguals of English and Spanish, two languages which differ in the type of non-modal voice usually encountered at ends of utterances: American English often has phrase-final creak, whereas in Mexican Spanish, phrase-final voiced sounds are breathy or even devoiced. Twenty-one bilinguals from the San Diego-Tijuana border region were recorded (with electroglottography and audio) reading passages in English and Spanish. Ends of utterances were coded for their visual voice quality as “modal” (having no aspiration noise or voicing irregularity), “breathy” (having aspiration noise), “creaky” (having voicing irregularity), or “breathy-creaky” (having both aspiration noise and voicing irregularity). In utterance-final position, speakers showed more frequent use of both modal and creaky voice when speaking in English, and more frequent use of breathy and breathy-creaky voice when speaking in Spanish. We find no role of language dominance on the rates of these four voice qualities. The electroglottographic and acoustic analyses show that all voice qualities, even utterance-final creak, are produced with increased glottal spreading; the combination of distinct noise measures and amplitude of voicing can distinguish breathy, creaky, and breathy-creaky voice qualities from one another, and from modal voice. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Prosody in Shared Linguistic Spaces of the Spanish-Speaking World)

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25 pages, 1468 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Creaky Voice in Chilean Spanish: A Tool for Organizing Discourse and Invoking Alignment

by Mariška Bolyanatz

Languages 2023, 8(3), 161; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8030161 - 30 Jun 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2870

Abstract

This study relies on an interactional, conversational–analytic approach to elucidate what meanings Chilean Spanish speakers convey via creaky voice quality in informal conversations. Highly creaky utterances produced by 18 speakers were derived from a larger corpus of sociolinguistic interview speech from Santiago, Chile, and examined via an interactional approach that accounted for how creaky voice figured in the process of meaning-making and meaning negotiations throughout the conversation. Results indicate that approximately 40% of highly creaky utterances were used to organize the speaker’s discourse, signaling the end of turns, hedges or uncertainty, and a change in communicative purpose, while the majority of the highly creaky utterances were used to invoke alignment with the listener via ensuring that their messages or stances were understood and potentially endorsed. This study offers evidence from a non-English language for creaky voice as a tool for both discursive organization and interactional alignment. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Social Meanings of Language Variation in Spanish)

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18 pages, 1256 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Acoustic Voice and Speech Biomarkers of Treatment Status during Hospitalization for Acute Decompensated Heart Failure

by Olivia M. Murton, G. William Dec, Robert E. Hillman, Maulik D. Majmudar, Johannes Steiner, John V. Guttag and Daryush D. Mehta

Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(3), 1827; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13031827 - 31 Jan 2023

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4261

Abstract

This study investigates acoustic voice and speech features as biomarkers for acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF), a serious escalation of heart failure symptoms including breathlessness and fatigue. ADHF-related systemic fluid accumulation in the lungs and laryngeal tissues is hypothesized to affect phonation and respiration for speech. A set of daily spoken recordings from 52 patients undergoing inpatient ADHF treatment was analyzed to identify voice and speech biomarkers for ADHF and to examine the trajectory of biomarkers during treatment. Results indicated that speakers produce more stable phonation, a more creaky voice, faster speech rates, and longer phrases after ADHF treatment compared to their pre-treatment voices. This project builds on work to develop a method of monitoring ADHF using speech biomarkers and presents a more detailed understanding of relevant voice and speech features. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Methods and Engineering Solutions to Voice III)

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38 pages, 5469 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Stød Timing and Domain in Danish

by Jailyn M. Peña

Languages 2022, 7(1), 50; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010050 - 24 Feb 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3008

Abstract

This study investigates the timing of stød, a type of phonological nonmodal phonation related to creaky voice in Danish, relative to the syllable. Stød-bearing syllables are characterized by high fundamental frequency (F0) and modal phonation at the beginning of the syllable followed by nonmodal, often creaky phonation and low F0 towards the end of the syllable (the stød phase proper). However, the timing of these two phases relative to the syllable and to each other has been debated. To investigate this, F0 throughout the word and the timing of the stød phase proper relative to the syllable were analyzed in five types of monosyllabic words. The results show that across word types the first stød phase (high F0) coordinates with the syllable rhyme onset, whilst the second phase is timed to the center of the sonorant rhyme, in contrast to previous hypotheses of stød timing. This relationship is formalized using the framework of Articulatory Phonology. In doing so, two additions to the theory are proposed to account for the biphasic nature of stød and the timing of the stød phase proper relative to the syllable. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring the Interaction between Phonation and Prosody)

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