The role of breathy voice in Hmu tone perception

ABSTRACT: Previous studies on tone perception have mainly focused on the role of F 0, while there are few but increasing studies on the effect of non-modal phonation. This study investigates the role of non-modal phonation in perceiving the five level tones used in Hmu, in which the lowest level tone (T11) is often referred to as “breathy voice”. First, an acoustic analysis was conducted on those tones to determine the voice quality and whether breathiness is limited to specific tones, revealing that breathiness only co-occurs with T11. Second, a perception experiment was performed to investigate whether breathiness can influence T11 identification. Results show that identification scores significantly differ only for the pairs of two continua that involve T11. This suggests that, relative to other tones, native speakers rely on breathiness in T11 identification, which derives from the accompanying phonation in its production. These findings shed light on how, alongside F 0, non-modal phonation contributes to tone perception, which demonstrates a new kind for the role of phonation in tonal contrasts. Considering these results, it is thus necessary to incorporate phonation cues when defining tone. 摘要: 前人对声调感知的研究主要聚焦在 F 0的作用上，鲜有研究关注特殊嗓音 发声类型的影响。本文研究特殊嗓音发声类型在苗语五平调(低平调T11 通常被认为具有气嗓音)感知中的作用。本项研究首先通过声学分析确 定五个平调的嗓音质量，以及气嗓特性是否仅限于特定声调，结果显示 气嗓特性仅与T11共现。在此基础上，本文通过感知实验研究气嗓音是 否会影响T11的辨认，结果表明，辨认得分仅在那些包含T11的声调连 续统中存在显著性差异。这表明，与其他平调相比，母语者在T11的辨 认中依赖其在言语产生中伴随而来的气嗓音。本文研究发现阐明了特殊 嗓音发声类型如何与 F 0共同作用于声调感知，这为发声类型在声调对立 中的角色提供了一种新类型。综合上述结果，从言语感知的视角看，本 文认为在定义声调时加入发声线索是十分必要的。