Yohann Meynadier

The shouted voice: A pilot study of laryngeal physiology under extreme aerodynamic pressure

Abstract Introduction: The objective was to study the behavior of the larynx during shouted voice production, when the larynx is exposed to extremely high subglottic pressure. Materials and methods: The study involved electroglottographic, acoustic, and aerodynamic analyses of shouts produced at maximum effort by three male participants. Results and discussion: Under a normal speaking voice, the voice sound pressure level (SPL) is proportional to the subglottic pressure. However, when the subglottic pressure reached high levels, the voice SPL reached a maximum value and then decreased as subglottic pressure increased further. Furthermore, the electroglottographic signal sometimes lost its periodicity during the shout, suggesting irregular vocal fold vibration.

Estimating Vocal Effort from the Aerodynamics of Labial Fricatives: A Feasibility Study

OBJECTIVE AND HYPOTHESISnVocal effort in loud voice is produced with increased subglottal pressure during vowels and increased supraglottal pressure during consonants. In the paper, our main objective is to check whether it was supported by a parallel increase in the airflow resistance of the laryngeal articulator and of the supralaryngeal articulator, here the lips.nnnSTUDY DESIGN AND METHODnFor this comparison, our choice fell on the fricative consonants, as their production allows perfectly synchronous air pressure and airflow measurements. Also, the calculation of the real instantaneous aerodynamic resistance is possible with fricatives-as it is with vowels-whereas it is not possible with plosives. The present feasibility study on a healthy subject is based on direct subglottal and intraoral pressures and airflow measured for /f/ or /v/ and from the contiguous vowel produced in VCVCV nonsense words at different levels of intensity.nnnRESULTS AND CONCLUSIONnThe results support that the airflow resistances at the lips and that at the larynx are quite parallel. The airflow resistance at the lips during labial fricative production could provide a good picture of the laryngeal resistance during the production of continuous speech. This suggests clinical applications using both noninvasive inferred measurements of subglottal pressure variation and direct noninferred airflow measurements from more natural speech production tasks.

Dynamic Acoustic Evidence of Nasalization as a Compensatory Mechanism for Voicing in Spanish Apraxic Speech.

This paper is concerned with the phonetic realization of the voicing contrast by two Spanish speakers with surgery-related apraxia of speech and two matched control speakers. Specifically, it examines whether speakers with AOS, widely reported to have a deficit in laryngeal control, use nasal leak as a compensatory mechanism aimed at facilitating the initiation of voicing in word-initial stops. The results show that the two apraxic speakers produced prevoicing in /b d g/ in only one third of the cases (correctly identified as ‘voiced’). In these cases, however, they exhibited significantly longer prevoicing than control subjects, and this longer voiced portion was closely related to a longer nasal murmur. These results shed light on the compensation strategies used by apraxic subjects to achieve voicing. Differences in the intensity patterns of nasal and voiced stops indicate that apraxic speakers control the timing of velopharyngeal gesture, suggesting that apraxia is a selective impairment.

Accès lexical et reconnaissance du voisement en voix chuchotée

La reconnaissance du trait de voisement de consonnes obstruantes chuchotees en francais a ete examinee via un paradigme damorcage semantique auditif-visuel. Un effet damorcage damplitude similaire a celui mesure en voix modale a ete observe uniquement lorsque lobstruante du mot amorce chuchote est sourde (dessert-CHOCOLAT). Aucun effet damorcage na ete note quand lobstruante du mot amorce est voisee (desert) que ce soit sur le mot cible SABLE associe semantique de desert ou sur le mot cible CHOCOLAT associe semantique de dessert. Ainsi, meme si certaines travaux ont mis en evidence quen voix chuchotee les consonnes obstruantes voisees maintiennent des traces phonetiques de leur identite sous-jacente, notre etude montre que ces consonnes sont ambigues pour lauditeur et que leur reconnaissance nest pas immediate.

Effort produit et ressenti selon le voisement en français

Les muscles larynges et articulatoires sont impliques dans la realisation des traits qui distinguent les phonemes. Cette etude porte sur l’auto-perception par les locuteurs et la repartition de l’effort vocal et articulatoire en fonction du trait de voisement en parole modale comparee a la parole chuchotee en francais. Pour les 12 obstruantes du francais, l’effort est ressenti plus important pour les voisees que les non voisees correspondantes, excepte dans le cas des fricatives labiodentales. Les analyses de la production des occlusives bilabiales montrent que l’effort larynge est superieur pour les consonnes voisees et l’effort articulatoire superieur pour les non voisees, mais l’inverse pour les fricatives. Ces resultats indiquent que l’effort ressenti lors de sa propre production repose sur une perception predominante de l’effort larynge sur l’effort articulatoire en voix modale comme en voix nchuchotee ; mais qu’il est cependant module selon le lieu et le mode d’articulation des consonnes.

On the perception of voicing in whisper: a cross-modal semantic priming study

This study focuses on the perception of the voicing feature in whispered words in French. A voiced consonant in whispered voice is produced without vibration of the vocal folds, i.e. the main property of the [+voiced] feature in this language. In French, some studies show that the [+voice] whispered obstruents retain some phonetic properties of their underlying identity, regarding acoustical traces related to their duration (Vercherand, 2010, Meynadier et Gaydina, 2013), to their intra-oral pressure (Meynadier, Gaydina 2013, Garnier et al. 2014, Meynadier 2015) or to their glottal area (Malecot et Peebles 1965, Crevier-Buchman et al. 2009, Meynadier 2015). However, even fewer studies teach us how the voicing contrast could be recognized by French. The few studies examining how French listeners perceive the voicing contrast in whispered speech have produced elliptical and contradictory results with not really comparable methods (Vercherand 2010, Fux 2012, Meynadier et al. 2013). Here, the perception of the voicing feature of whispered obstruent consonants is examined in two cross-modal semantic priming experiments. In Experiment 1 with visual targets presented at the offset of auditory primes, a priming effect of similar magnitude to that observed in modal voice is found only when the whispered prime includes a voiceless obstruent (e.g. [s] in dessert primes CHOCOLAT). No priming effect appears when the whispered prime includes a voiced obstruent (e.g. [z] in desert), neither on the target word SABLE (sand) semantically related to desert, nor on the target word CHOCOLAT semantically related to dessert. In Experiment 2 with visual targets presented 50 ms after the offset of auditory primes, primes with a whispered voiced obstruent facilitate the processing of their respective semantic associated target words (i.e. [z] in desert primes SABLE). Hence, our study shows that the reconstruction of the voiced feature is not immediate during whispered word recognition and requires a certain amount of time. During this time, the listen may extract the phonetic traces needed to recover the underlying voicing of whispered voiced obstruents.