Previous research suggests that beatboxers only use sounds that exist
in the world’s languages. This paper provides evidence to the
contrary, showing that beatboxers use non-linguistic articulations
and airstream mechanisms to produce many sound effects that have not
been attested in any language. An analysis of real-time magnetic resonance
videos of beatboxing reveals that beatboxers produce non-linguistic
articulations such as ingressive retroflex trills and ingressive lateral
bilabial trills. In addition, beatboxers can use both lingual egressive
and pulmonic ingressive airstreams, neither of which have been reported
in any language.
The results of this study affect our understanding of the limits
of the human vocal tract, and address questions about the mental units
that encode music and phonological grammar.
Cite as: Blaylock, R., Patil, N., Greer, T., Narayanan, S.S. (2017) Sounds of the Human Vocal Tract. Proc. Interspeech 2017, 2287-2291, doi: 10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1631
@inproceedings{blaylock17_interspeech,
author={Reed Blaylock and Nimisha Patil and Timothy Greer and Shrikanth S. Narayanan},
title={{Sounds of the Human Vocal Tract}},
year=2017,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2017},
pages={2287--2291},
doi={10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1631}
}