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
    		baʱr
    		bar
    		ba̤r
    		baʱr
    pɔr
    		pɔ̤r
    kan
    		ka̤n
    mɛl
    		mɛ̤l
    		mɛl
    		mɛ̤l

    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

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

    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