Voice-quality contrasts

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This demo includes the following languages:
1. Gujarati
2. Jalapa Mazatec

Related demos:

  • Mpi (tone language with voice quality differences)
  • !χóõ (language with multiple contrasting voice qualities)
  • Laryngealization
  • Laver: Laryngeal settings

    1. Gujarati (from SoWL)

    Gujarati contrasts normally voiced vowels with breathy-voiced vowels. Interestingly, it also has voiced-aspirated consonants. The breathy-voiced vowels apparently developed historically from loss of an inter-syllabic h (see Ladefoged, Vowels and Consonants, p.126).

    Speaker 1 Speaker 2
    Voiced Vowel  Breathy Vowel  Voiced Aspirated Stop  Voiced Vowel  Breathy Vowel  Voiced Aspirated Stop 
    bar
    		ba̤r
    		bʱar
    		bar
    		ba̤r
    		bʱar
    pɔr
    		pɔ̤r
    kan
    		ka̤n
    mɛl
    		mɛ̤l
    		Smɛl
    		Smɛ̤l

    2. Jalapa Mazatec (fromSoWL)

    In addition to normal voicing, it has both creaky and breathy voice.
    See Ladefoged, Vowels and Consonants, p. 127-130.

    Voiced  Creaky Voiced  Breathy Voiced 
    tʰa
    		ndæ̰
    		ndæ̤

  • Sonagrams for the examples above
    Note, for example, that the breathy vowel is not equally breathy throughout: virtually voiceless at the beginning, and fairly normally voiced at the end.
    See Gordon & Ladefoged (2001), J. Phonetics 39, for more discussion.

    Additional material:
    Each word spoken twice by two speakers, in the order "horse", "buttocks", "seed" (so 4x horse etc.)

  • Sonagrams and spectra for the first example of each word in the list

    Extracted from the file maj_word-list_1984_02.wav in the UCLA phonetics archive.
    Source:
    2007. The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Department of Linguistics.
    Click here for further information