Band 35, Heft 1

The aim of the present study was to investigate the laryngeal adjustments for voiced versus voiceless distinction in Japanese consonant production by means of laryngeal electromyography (EMG) and fiberoptic observation. Multichannel EMG recordings were taken of a Japanese subject and the data were computer-processed to obtain the averaged activity patterns of the five intrinsic laryngeal muscles with special reference to the voicing distinction in consonant production in various phonetic environments. It was found that there were apparent reciprocal patterns in the posterior cricoarytenoid (PCA) and the interarytenoid (INT) in terms of significant negative correlation, and active control of PCA for voicelessness was demonstrated. The patterns of the thyroarytenoid and the lateral cricoarytenoid were different from that of INT even though these two muscles are usually classified as the members of the adductor group, and their activity levels were apparently influenced by the phonetic environment. A possible contribution of the cricothyroid (CT) to the voicing distinction was also pointed out but further investigations on acoustic parameters seem to be mandatory in more critical interpretation of CT activity in speech.

The aim of this study is to determine wether the threshold and pitch of falling glissandos are identical to those calculated for rising ones - and consequently to test the hypothesis that rising glissandos are less well perceived than falling ones. The results show a threshold between 18 and 19 Hz for a duration of 200 ms, with an initial frequency of 139 Hz. The pitch corresponds to the frequency of a point at two thirds of the duration of the vowel. These results confirm those obtained for rising glissandos. The above hypothesis is not verified. In conclusion, a model of hearing is proposed which account for the modes of perception of glissandos.

For the purpose of a contrastive analysis only distinctive formal elements and functions are to be considered. The latter are ‘lexical or syntactic disambiguation’, ‘syntactic characterization’ and ‘communicative differentiation’. In German, modal particles and intonation render expressive functions which are conveyed in English by intonation only. The differing punctuation systems of English and German have to be considered as a source of interference besides limited differences between the English and the German intonation systems.