Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T18:33:17.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The phonetic properties of the non-modal phonation in Shanghainese

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2019

Jia Tian Open the ORCID record for Jia Tian [Opens in a new window]  and
Jianjing Kuang
Jia Tian
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvaniajiatian@sas.upenn.edu
Jianjing Kuang
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvaniakuangj@sas.upenn.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigates the acoustic and articulatory properties of phonation contrast in Shanghainese, the most thoroughly studied Chinese Wu dialect. Although previous studies generally suggest that the non-modal phonation associated with the lower register in Shanghainese is relatively breathier, it is unclear whether it is ‘breathy voice’, ‘slack voice’ or ‘whispery voice’. This study aims to provide a better understanding of the phonetic realization of the non-modal phonation in Shanghainese. Simultaneous audio and electroglottographic recordings were made from 52 speakers born before 1980. Both acoustic and articulatory data confirmed that the non-modal phonation in Shanghainese is produced with relatively less glottal constriction and more aperiodic noise than the modal phonation. The novel finding of this study is that aperiodic noise plays a much more important role than spectral measures (i.e. indicators of glottal constriction) in the phonetic realization of the non-modal phonation. This property is distinct from the breathier voices in Gujarati, White Hmong and Southern Yi. These results suggest that the non-modal phonation in Shanghainese should be characterized as ‘whispery voice’, which is phonetically distinct from both ‘breathy voice’ and ‘slack voice’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , August 2021 , pp. 202 - 228
Check for updates
Copyright
© International Phonetic Association 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramson, Arthur S. & Luangthongkum, Theraphan. 2009. A fuzzy boundary between tone languages and voice-register languages. In Fant, Gunnar, Fujisaki, Hiroya & Shen, J. (eds.), Frontiers in phonetics and speech science, 149–155. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Abramson, Arthur S., Luangthongkum, Theraphan & Nye, Patrick W.. 2004. Voice register in Suai (Kuai): An analysis of perceptual and acoustic data. Phonetica 61, 147–171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Abramson, Arthur S., Nye, Patrick W. & Luangthongkum, Theraphan. 2007. Voice register in Khmu’: Experiments in production and perception. Phonetica 64, 80–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Abramson, Arthur S., Tiede, Mark K. & Luangthongkum, Theraphan. 2015. Voice register in Mon: Acoustics and electroglottography. Phonetica 72(4), 237–256.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Avelino, Heriberto. 2010. Acoustic and electroglottographic analyses of nonpathological, nonmodal phonation. Journal of Voice 24(3), 270–280.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baken, R. J. & Orlikoff, Robert F.. 2000. Clinical measurement of speech and voice. San Diego, CA: Singular.Google Scholar
Ball, Martin J., Esling, John H. & Craig Dickson, B.. 1995. The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25(2), 71–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ball, Martin J., Esling, John H. & Craig Dickson, B.. 2018. Revisions to the VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 48(2), 165–171.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bao, Zhiming. 1999. The structure of tone. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berkson, Kelly Harper. 2019. Acoustic correlates of breathy sonorants in Marathi. Journal of Phonetics 73, 70–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickley, Corine. 1982. Acoustic analysis and perception of breathy vowels. MIT Speech Communication Working Papers 1, 71–81.Google Scholar
Blankenship, Barbara. 2002. The timing of nonmodal phonation in vowels. Journal of Phonetics 30, 163–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2018. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer. http://www.praat.org/.Google Scholar
Buder, Eugene H. 2000. Acoustic analysis of voice quality: A tabulation of algorithms 1902–1990. In Kent, Raymond D. & Ball, Martin J. (eds.), Voice quality measurement, 119–244. San Diego, CA: Singular.Google Scholar
Cao, Jianfen & Maddieson, Ian. 1992. An exploration of phonation types in Wu dialects of Chinese. Journal of Phonetics 20, 77–92.Google Scholar
Catford, J. C. 1977. Fundamental problems in phonetics. Bloomington, IN & London: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Chao, Yuen Ren. 1928. [Studies in the modern Wu dialects]. Peking: Tsing Hua College Research Institute.Google Scholar
Chao, Yuen Ren. 1930. A system of tone-letters. Le Maître Phonétique 45, 24–27.Google Scholar
Chen, Yiya. 2011. How does phonology guide phonetics in segment–f0 interaction? Journal of Phonetics 39(4), 612–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Yiya & Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2015. Shanghai Chinese. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45(3), 321–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Zhongmin. 2010. [An acoustic study of voiceless onset followed by breathiness of Wu dialects: Based on the Shanghai dialect]. [Studies in Languages and Linguistics] 30(3), 20–34.Google Scholar
Childer, Donald G. & Krishnamurthy, Ashok K.. 1985. A critical review of electroglottography. Critical Reviews in Biomedical Engineering 12(2), 131–161.Google Scholar
Cho, Taehong, Jun, Sun-Ah & Ladefoged, Peter. 2002. Acoustic and aerodynamic correlates of Korean stops and fricatives. Journal of Phonetics 30, 193–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colton, Raymond H. & Conture, Edward G.. 1990. Problems and pitfalls of electroglottography. Journal of Voice 4(1), 10–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Krom, Guus. 1993. A cepstrum-based technique for determining a harmonics-to-noise ratio in speech signals. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36(2), 254–266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DiCanio, Christian T. 2009. The phonetics of register in Takhian Thong Chong. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39(2), 162–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dromey, Christopher, Stathopoulos, Elaine T. & Sapienza, Christine M.. 1992. Glottal airflow and electroglottographic measures of vocal function at multiple intensities. Journal of Voice 6, 44–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duanmu, San. 1990. A formal study of syllable, tone, stress and domain in Chinese languages. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Duda, Richard O., Hart, Peter E. & Stork, David G.. 2001. Pattern classification, 2nd edn. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Interscience.Google Scholar
Edmondson, Jerold A. & Esling, John H.. 2006. The valves of the throat and their functioning in tone, vocal register and stress: Laryngoscopic case studies. Phonology 23(2), 157–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esling, John H. & Harris, Jimmy G.. 2005. States of the glottis: An articulatory phonetic model based on laryngoscopic observations. In Hardcastle, William J. & Beck, Janet Machenzie (eds.), A figure of speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, 347–383. Mahwah, NJ & London: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Esposito, Christina M. 2010. The effects of linguistic experience on the perception of phonation. Journal of Phonetics 38, 306–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esposito, Christina M. 2012. An acoustic and electroglottographic study of White Hmong tone and phonation. Journal of Phonetics 40(3), 466–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer-Jørgensen, Eli. 1967. Phonetic analysis of breathy (murmured) vowels. Indian Linguistics 28, 71–139.Google Scholar
Gao, Jiayin. 2016. Sociolinguistic motivations in sound change: On-going loss of low tone breathy voice in Shanghai Chinese. Papers in Historical Phonology 1, 166–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gao, Jiayin & Hallé, Pierre. 2017. Phonetic and phonological properties of tones in Shanghai Chinese. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 46, 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gao, Jiayin, Hallé, Pierre, Honda, K., Maeda, S. & Toda, M.. 2011. Shanghai slack voice: Acoustic and EPGG data. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), Hong Kong, 719–722.Google Scholar
Garellek, Marc. 2012. The timing and sequencing of coarticulated non-modal phonation in English and White Hmong. Journal of Phonetics 40, 152–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garellek, Marc & Esposito, Christina M.. 2018. The effects of prosody on pitch and voice quality of White Hmong tones. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 143(3), 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garellek, Marc & Keating, Patricia. 2011. The acoustic consequences of phonation and tone interactions in Jalapa Mazatec. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41(2), 185–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garellek, Marc, Samlan, Robin, Gerratt, Bruce R. & Kreiman, Jody. 2016. Modeling the voice source in terms of spectral slopes. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 139(3), 1404–1410.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garellek, Marc & White, James. 2015. Phonetics of Tongan stress. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45(1), 13–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gobl, Christer & Chasaide, Ailbhe Ní. 2010. Voice source variation and its communicative functions. In Hardcastle, William J., Laver, John & Gibbon, Fiona E. (eds.), The handbook of phonetic sciences, 2nd edn., 378–423. Singapore: Wiley-Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Matthew & Ladefoged, Peter. 2001. Phonation types: A cross-linguistic overview. Journal of Phonetics 29, 383–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guion, Susan G., Post, Mark W. & Payne, Doris L.. 2004. Phonetic correlates of tongue root vowel contrasts in Maa. Journal of Phonetics 32(4), 517–542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanson, Helen M. 1997. Glottal characteristics of female speakers: Acoustic correlates. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101(1), 466–481.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hanson, Helen M., Stevens, Kenneth N., Kuo, Hong-Kwang Jeff, Chen, Marilyn Y. & Slifka, Janet. 2001. Towards models of phonation. Journal of Phonetics 29, 451–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haudricourt, André-Georges. 1954. De l’origine des tons en vietnamien [The origin of tones in Vietnamese]. Journal Asiatique 242, 69–82.Google Scholar
Haudricourt, André-Georges. 1961. Bipartition et Tripartition des Systèmes de Tons dans quelques Langues d’Extrême-Orient [Two-way and three-way splitting of tonal systems in some Far-Eastern languages]. Bulletin de La Société de Linguistique de Paris 56, 163–180.Google Scholar
Henrich, Nathalie, d’Alessandro, Christophe, Doval, Boris & Castellengo, Michèle. 2004. On the use of the derivative of electroglottographic signals for characterization of nonpathological phonation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 115(3), 1321–1332.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hillenbrand, James, Cleveland, Ronald A. & Erickson, Robert L.. 1994. Acoustic correlates of breathy vocal quality. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 37, 769–778.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holmberg, Eva B., Hillman, Robert E. & Perkell, Joseph S.. 1988. Glottal airflow and transglottal air pressure measurements for male and female speakers in soft, normal, and loud voice. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 84(2), 511–529.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holmberg, Eva B., Hillman, Robert E., Perkell, Joseph S., Guiod, Peter C. & Goldman, Susan L.. 1995. Comparisons among aerodynamic, electroglottographic, and acoustic spectral measures of female voice. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 38(6), 1212–1223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howard, David M. 1995. Variation of electrolaryngographically derived closed quotient for trained and untrained adult female singers. Journal of Voice 9(2), 163–172.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Iseli, Markus, Shue, Yen-Liang & Alwan, Abeer. 2007. Age, sex, and vowel dependencies of acoustic measures related to the voice source. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121(4), 2283–2295.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jiang, Bing’er & Kuang, Jianjing. 2016. Consonant effects on tonal registers in Jiashan Wu. In Farrell, Patrick (ed.), Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, vol. 1, article 30, 13 pp. Washington DC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kang, Yoonjung & Han, Sungwoo. 2013. Tonogenesis in early contemporary Seoul Korean: A longitudinal case study. Lingua 134, 62–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karlgren, Bernhard. 1926. Études sur la phonologie Chinoise (Archives d’études Orientales 15). Leiden: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Keating, Patricia, Esposito, Christina M., Garellek, Marc, Khan, Sameer ud Dowla & Kuang, Jianjing. 2010. Phonation contrasts across languages. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 108, 188–202.Google Scholar
Kelterer, Anneliese. 2017. Non-modal voice quality in Chichimeco. MA thesis, Lund University.Google Scholar
Khan, Sameer ud Dowla. 2012. The phonetics of contrastive phonation in Gujarati. Journal of Phonetics 40(6), 780–795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreiman, Jody & Gerratt, Bruce R.. 2012. Perceptual interaction of the harmonic source and noise in voice. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131(1), 492–500.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kreiman, Jody, Gerratt, Bruce R., Garellek, Marc, Samlan, Robin & Zhang, Zhaoyan. 2014. Toward a unified theory of voice production and perception. Loquens 1(1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreiman, Jody, Iseli, Markus, Neubauer, Juergen, Shue, Yen-Liang, Gerratt, Bruce R. & Alwan, Abeer. 2008. The relationship between open quotient and H1*–H2*. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 124, 2495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuang, Jianjing. 2011. Production and perception of the phonation contrast in Yi. MA thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Kuang, Jianjing. 2013. Phonation in tonal contrasts. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Kuang, Jianjing & Keating, Patricia. 2014. Vocal fold vibratory patterns in tense versus lax phonation contrasts. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 136(5), 2784–2797.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuznetsova, Alexandra, Brockhoff, Per B. & Christensen, Rune H. B.. 2017. lmerTest: Tests in linear xixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software 82(13), 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter. 1971. Preliminaries to linguistic phonetics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter & Maddieson, Ian. 1996. The sounds of the world’s languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Laver, John. 1980. The phonetic description of voice quality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Liu, Fu. 1925. Étude expérimentale sur les tons du chinois [Experimental studies on Chinese tones]. Paris: Société d’édition.Google Scholar
Maspero, Henri. 1912. Études sur la phonétique historique de la langue annamite. les initiales [Studies in Annamite historical phonetics: Initial consonants]. Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 12, 1–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazaudon, Martine & Michaud, Alexis. 2008. Tonal contrasts and initial consonants: A case study of Tamang, a ‘missing link’ in tonogenesis. Phonetica 65(4), 231–256.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michaud, Alexis. 2004. A measurement from electroglottography: DECPA, and its application in prosody. In Bel, Bernard & Marlien, Isabelle (eds.), Speech Prosody 2004, Nara, Japan, 633–636.Google Scholar
Michaud, Alexis. 2012. Monosyllabicization: Patterns of evolution in Asian languages. In Nau, Nicole, Stolz, Thomas & Stroh, Cornelia (eds.), Monosyllables: From phonology to typology, 115–130. Berlin: Akademie.Google Scholar
Miller, Amanda L. 2007. Guttural vowels and guttural co-articulation in Ju|’hoansi. Journal of Phonetics 35(1), 56–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Misnadin, James P. Kirby & Remijsen, Bert. 2015. Temporal and spectral properties of Madurese stops. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVIII), Glasgow.Google Scholar
Nara, Kiranpreet. 2017. Acoustic and electroglottographic study of breathy and modal vowels as produced by heritage and native Gujarati speakers. Interspeech 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, 1054–1058.Google Scholar
Pittayaporn, Pittayawat & Kirby, James. 2017. Laryngeal contrasts in the Tai dialect of Cao Bằng. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 47(1), 65–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Core Team. 2018. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.r-project.org/.Google Scholar
Ren, Nianqi. 1988. A fiberoptic and transillumination study of Shanghai stops. Proceedings of International Conference on Wu dialects, Hong Kong, 261–268.Google Scholar
Ren, Nianqi. 1992. Phonation types and stop consonant distinctions: Shanghai Chinese. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Rose, Phil. 1989. Phonetics and phonology of yang tone phonation types in Zhenhai. Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale 18(2), 229–245.Google Scholar
Rose, Phil. 2015. Tonation in three Chinese Wu dialects. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVIII), Glasgow.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, Martin. 1979. Some relations between glottal air flow and vocal fold contact area. In Ludlow, Christy L. & Hart, Molly O’Connell (eds.), Proceeding of the Conference on the Assessment of Vocal Pathology, Bethesda, MD, 88–96.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, Martin & Mashie, James J.. 1988. Monitoring vocal fold abduction through vocal fold contact area. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 31, 338–351.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Samlan, Robin A., Story, Brad H. & Bunton, Kate. 2013. Relation of perceived breathiness to laryngeal kinematics and acoustic measures based on computational modeling. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 56(4), 1209–1223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seyfarth, Scott, Klok, Jozina Vander & Garellek, Marc. 2017. Acoustics of the tense–lax stop contrast in Semarang Javanese. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 142(4), 2581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shue, Yen-Liang, Keating, Patricia, Vicenik, Chad & Yu, Kristine. 2011. VoiceSauce: A program for voice analysis. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVII), Hong Kong, 1846–1849.Google Scholar
Stevens, Kenneth N. 1977. Physics of laryngeal behavior and larynx modes. Phonetica 34, 264–279.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tehrani, Henry. 2010. EGGWorks. http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/facilities/physiology/EggWorksSetup.exe (accessed 1 February 2017).Google Scholar
Thurgood, Graham. 2002. Vietnamese and tonogenesis: Revising the model and the analysis. Diachronica 19(2), 333–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tian, Jia & Kuang, Jianjing. 2016. Revisiting the register contrast in Shanghai Chinese. In DiCanio, C., Malins, J., Good, J., Michelson, K., Jaeger, J. & Keily, H. (eds.), Proceedings of Tonal Aspects of Languages 2016, Buffalo, NY, 147–151.Google Scholar
Venables, W. N. & Ripley, B. D.. 2002. Modern applied statistical with S, 4th edn. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wayland, Ratree & Jongman, Allard. 2003. Acoustic correlates of breathy and clear vowels: The case of Khmer. Journal of Phonetics 31, 181–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, Baohua & Tang, Zhenzhu. 1988. [A description of the urban Shanghai dialect]. Shanghai: Shanghai Educational Publishing House.Google Scholar
Yip, Moira Jean. 1980. The tonal phonology of Chinese. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Jie & Yan, Hanbo. 2018. Contextually dependent cue realization and cue weighting for a laryngeal contrast in Shanghai Wu. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 144(3), 1293–1308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, Zhaoyan. 2016. Cause–effect relationship between vocal fold physiology and voice production in a three-dimensional phonation model. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 139(4), 1493–1507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Tian and Kuang supplementary material

Tian and Kuang supplementary material 1

Download Tian and Kuang supplementary material(File)
File 456.6 KB