This paper presents an acoustic and physiological analysis of the Danish ‘stød’ with an introduction on its phonological role and distribution. The stød is a prosodic feature bound to definite syllables in certain word types and connected to the latter part of the syllable. Phonetically it is a phonation type related to creaky voice. The first part of the syllable is characterized acoustically by a higher pitch level and often a higher intensity level than syllables without stød, and by a relatively high subglottal pressure and airflow, thus generally by a relatively high expenditure of energy. In the second part, the stød phase proper, there is a considerable decrease in intensity, particularly in the lower part of the spectrum and, for the majority of the speakers, a noticeable decrease in fundamental frequency, and/or aperiodicity. Moreover the airflow is low, and inverse filtering shows a longer closure time in each vibration. There is also a slight decrease in subglottal pressure, and all speakers have a constriction of the vocal folds and often of the ventricular folds as well, but with large interindividual variation as to the degree of constriction. On the boundary between the first and the second phase most speakers have a strong contraction of the vocalis and lateralis muscles, obviously preparing for the glottal constriction of the second phase. The author cannot follow Svend Smith in concluding that a sudden contraction and relaxation of the respiratory muscles resulting in a quick rise and fall in subglottal pressure constitutes the primary factor. There is, rather, an independent contraction of a number of muscles, and neither the high pitch at the beginning nor the fall in pitch and intensity in the second phase can be explained by the subglottal pressure contour. The high pitch level at the beginning may be explained by activity in the cricothyroid, and the decrease in pitch and the low intensity in the second phase is probably due to constriction of the glottis, although the fact that the decrease in intensity starts rather early raises some problems. Finally the question of the origin of the stød is discussed briefly. It is suggested that the stød in Danish perhaps originated from a reinforcement of the first syllable in combination with reduction and loss of a following syllable in Common Scandinavian. The reinforcement may have been accompanied by a rise in pitch, so that developments in different directions (involving stød or tonal accents) were possible.
Chapter I gives a brief survey of phonological interpretations of the Danish stød, the dialectal and historical background, and previous phonetic investigations. Chapter II gives an account of the material, subjects and procedures used in the present investigation. Chapter III contains the results. In accordance with Svend Smith a distinction is made between the first and the second phase of the stød. The first phase is characterized acoustically by a higher pitch level and often a higher intensity level than syllables without stød, and by a relatively high subglottal pressure and airflow, thus generally by a relatively high expenditure of energy. In the second phase, the stød phase proper, there is a strong decrease in intensity, particularly in the lower part of the spectrum and, for the majority of the speakers, a noticeable decrease in fundamental frequency and/or aperiodicity. Moreover the airflow is low, and inverse filtering shows a decreasing amplitude of glottal flow peaks. There is also a slight decrease in subglottal pressure, and all speakers have a constriction of the vocal folds and often of the ventricular folds as well, but with large interindividual variation as to the degree of constriction. On the boundary between the first and the second phase most speakers have a strong contraction of the vocalis and lateralis muscles, obviously preparing for the glottis constriction of the second phase. Chapter IV discusses the stød in relation to phonation types and concludes that the stød is closely related to creaky voice though without sharing all of its characteristic features. Moreover the causal relations among the various properties of the Danish stød are discussed. The author cannot follow Svend Smith in assuming that a sudden contraction and relaxation of the respiratory muscles resulting in a quick rise and fall in subglottal pressure, constitute the primary factor. There is rather an independent contraction of a number of muscles, and neither the high pitch in the start nor the fall in pitch and intensity in the second phase can be explained by the subglottal pressure contour. The high pitch level in the start may be explained by activity in the cricothyroid, and the decrease in pitch and the low intensity in the second phase is probably due to the glottis constriction, although the fact that the decrease in intensity starts rather early, raises some problems. Finally the question of the origin of the stød is taken up again. It is suggested that the stød in Danish perhaps originated from a reinforcement of the first syllable due to reduction and loss of a following syllable in common Scandinavian. The reinforcement may have been accompanied by a rise in pitch so that developments in different directions (involving stød or tonal accents) were possible.
The main purpose of this paper is to show that the observation which is the starting point for almost all attempts at explaining intrinsic fundamental frequency (intrinsic F₀) in vowels, i.e. that it is correlated with vowel height (interpreted as tongue height), does not hold if short lax vowels are included, since they have a considerably lower tongue height but practically the same F₀ as their corresponding tense counterparts. Section 1 contains a discussion of some explanations of intrinsic F₀ and vowel height and a short exposition of its connection with other vowel features. Section 2 gives a survey of the properties of tense and lax vowels based on data from the phonetic literature. Section 3 reports on an investigation of German tense and lax front unrounded vowels, including duration, tongue height, jaw opening, vertical lip opening, formant frequencies, and F₀. Section 4 contains a discussion of various possible explanations of the results.
The author has asked subjects without phonetic training to group vowels according to given dimensions, to place vowels on a seven point scale according to given dimensions, and to match vowels with colours. The result is a clear and consistent grouping of vowels according to brightness (corresponding to bright and dark colours and to different hues of varying specific brightness), whereas no auditorydimension corresponding to saturation could be found. The placement of six vowels on 14 seven point scales with the poles bright-dark, light-heavy etc. and of twelve vowels on 3 selected scales yielded four different results, which may be assumed to represent four different factors, of which No. 1 corresponds mainly (but not completely) to the acoustic F 2 -dimension, No. 3 mainly (but not completely) to the acoustic Fj-dimension, whereas No. 2 is in between, representing a dominating dimension, with which the others sometimes fuse. A fourth dimension corresponding to rounding has not been sufficiently investigated. The vowels i y u are considered to be compact compared to ε ce ο as diffuse. The terminology used in the distinctive feature analysis is thus not very adequate when applied to perceptual dimensions.Comparisons based on similarity and dissimilarity have been started. An attempt to disentangle the auditory, motoric and phonemic contributions to the perceptual dimensions would be desirable.It is now generally accepted that speech sounds should not only be described in articulatory and in acoustic, but also in perceptual, terms. This, to a large extent, is the merit of ROMAN JAKOBSON, who as early as 1941 1 emphasized the importance of the perceptual level, realizing that it is primarily on this level we must seek for valid explanations of (1) the general laws for the structure of phonemic systems, (2) the general tendencies of sound development, (3) the facts of sound symbolism. This is largely a question of feature analysis, and the main question must therefore be: what are the basic dimensions by which speech sounds can be analysed into a limited number of phonetic features explaining the above-mentioned general tendencies? These dimensions can hardly be acoustic, since acoustic facts do not explain anything except under the implicit assumption that they have exact perceptual correlates (and this is by no means certain; on the contrary, we know that for pure tones this is not the case). Articulatory dimensions might be of more interest, but, here again, under the assumption that our classification of peripheral articulatory facts reflects the organisation 1 ROMAN JAKOBSON, "Kindersprache, Aphasie und allgemeine Lautgesetze' '
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.