Voice Quality Learned as Categorical Features

INTRODUCTION

Voice quality is important not only in conveying indexical aspects of language, but also lexical information in languages that have tone and/or phonation contrasts (e.g., breathy, creaky vowels). The lower-level acoustic phonetic properties that are involved in manifesting such linguistic contrasts are also used as talker information, thus contributing to the different linguistic and social functions of voice quality. It is unclear whether and how people learn to use voice quality as contrastive categories apart from identifying talkers, and what cues of voice quality people use to perceive phonation and tone contrasts. This study contributes to understanding the different functions of voice quality as linguistic versus talker information, in particular the phonological use in forming sound categories.

OBJECTIVE

This project aims to investigate how people learn voice quality as different linguistic categories. The questions addressed are whether novel phonation contrasts are processed comparable to segmental contrasts, how speakers of different language backgrounds transfer the multiple uses of voice quality, and what acoustic cues listeners use to establish these phonation categories.

Further experiments may investigate the role of phonetic detail underlying the system of voice quality in manifesting phonological and social functions.

METHOD

A series of perception experiments including training will be conducted in which participants are trained with resynthesized stimuli and asked to distinguish and categorize words containing modal, creaky, or breathy vowels. Stimuli will further vary in the acoustic realizations of the different phonation types. Both behavioral and eye-tracking methods are employed.

APPLICATION

The findings will inform how voice qualities are learned as contrastive features in linguistic categories such as tone and phonation. The project will be directly relevant for comparing the differences between contrastive and non-contrastive use of voice quality and the different mental representations and processes underlying their functions. This will further inform how the phonological use of voice quality interacts with its social use such as talker characteristics and interactional roles.