Volume 82, Issue 4

Velum behavior in speech production, particularly with nasal sounds, has been a matter of significant interest to researchers revealing many different factors that affect velum movement during speech events. Few studies, however, have explored velum movement patterns during inter-speech pauses compared to speech segments. To address this gap, we examined the velocity of velum movement during the production of both nasal sounds and inter-utterance pauses. We hypothesized that velum movement patterns differ between these two contexts and that language background may modulate these patterns. We analyzed velum movement in sentence-level speech of Québécois French and English speakers from the Université Laval X-ray videofluorography database. We measured the velopharyngeal opening (VPO) as the distance between the velum’s upper surface and the posterior pharyngeal wall. The change in VPO over time served as a proxy for the velocity of velum movement during speech segments and inter-speech pauses. We predicted faster velum movement during speech pauses and also faster movement for English relative to French speakers. Our results show that the velum behaves differently between speech and pause events in terms of the velocity and duration of the movement. In addition, velum behavior differs between languages, indicating language-specific articulatory configurations for the velum.

Voice quality (VQ) is frequently analysed in phonetic and phonological research. Recently, there has been motivation to assess VQ more ‘objectively’ using acoustic analysis. Our systematic review revealed a notable research focus on pathological speakers, with 48 % of excluded studies being rejected for investigating pathological populations. Among studies involving non-pathological speakers, the analysed speech material is often restricted to sustained vowel productions. Therefore, the suitability of acoustic techniques when analysing more naturalistic speech and non-pathological speakers remains unclear. We present a systematic literature review of acoustic methods used to categorise breathy and whispery VQ in non-pathological speakers. The literature was surveyed using four databases (ProQuest, PubMed, SCOPUS and Web of Science) and ICPhS proceedings between 1999 and 2023. The selection criteria included peer-reviewed articles conducting an acoustic analysis of breathy and whispery voices for vocally healthy speakers. Initial searches yielded 754 papers. Once filtered, 21 papers remained. The results reveal some consistency in the main acoustic parameters for breathy VQ (higher spectral tilt and lower HNR/CPP). Whispery voice was only addressed in two studies, meaning no trends were observed. We conclude that there remain inconsistencies in methods and findings, and thus we cannot identify an agreed ‘standard’ approach generally applicable to non-pathological speakers.