An Acoustic Typology of Creaky Voice

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K16745
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: The University of Aizu
• Principal Investigator: Perkins Jeremy 会津大学, コンピュータ理工学部, 准教授 (30725635)
• Research Collaborator: Lee Seunghun J. International Christian University, Div. of Arts & Sciences, Associate Professor
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: tone / phonation / Zhuang / Burmese / creakiness

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research focused on the use of creaky voice in Wuming Zhuang, finding that a pair of tones involve a creaky-modal phonation contrast. It also introduced a new tool, psychoacoustic roughness, which was found to more reliably identify creakiness in creaky and checked tones in Burmese. Other measures, such as the Covarep algorithm which relies on spectral measures, did not accurately predict creaky tones in Burmese. Finally, a triad of perception experiments were performed on Wuming Zhuang speakers to assess whether and to what extent they use creakiness, F0 and duration in distinguishing contrastive tones.

Free Research Field

Phonetics