Enlargement of the supraglottal cavity and its relation to stop consonant voicing

TLDR

The study situates its findings within a breath‑stream control model and considers implications for a general theory of speech motor control. The authors used high‑speed cinefluorography of a single adult male speaker to measure laryngeal, palatal, and tongue movements and derived temporal supraglottal cavity volume changes during voiced and voiceless stop closures, aligning them with acoustic recordings. Voiceless stops (/p,t,k/) were accompanied by silent closures and occasional supraglottal volume decreases, whereas voiced stops (/b,d,g/) involved vocal fold vibration and significant supraglottal volume increases that varied by place of articulation and phonetic context.

Abstract

Measurements were made of sagittal plane movements of the larynx, soft palate, and portions of the tongue, from a high-speed cinefluorographic film of utterances produced by one adult male speaker of American English. These measures were then used to approximate the temporal variations in supraglottal cavity volume during the closures of voiced and voiceless stop consonants. All data were subsequently related to a synchronous acoustic recording of the utterances. Instances of /p,t,k/ were always accompanied by silent closures, and sometimes accompanied by decreases in supraglottal volume. In contrast, instances of /b,d,g/ were always accompanied both by significant intervals of vocal fold vibration during closure, and relatively large increases in supraglottal volume. However, the magnitudes of volume increments during the voiced stops, and the means by which those increments were achieved, differed considerably across place of articulation and phonetic environment. These results are discussed in the context of a well-known model of the breath-stream control mechanism, and their relevance for a general theory of speech motor control is considered.