Voice quality – understood in the broad, Laverian (1980) sense of a quasi-permanent auditory coloring of the voice formed by holistic posturing of the vocal tract (both laryngeal and supra- laryngeal components) – remains one of the more elusive aspects of prosody, particularly in how it interacts with segmental structure. This talk explores this issue of interaction between segmental structure and voice quality by means of computational modeling of speech. However, we will approach the topic in a somewhat oblique direction, by considering some computational modeling studies that look at the impact of anatomico-morphological variation on speech segment production. Anatomico-morphological variation is, after all, the basis for one’s organic or biologically-determined voice quality. We then consider a parallel between anatomico-morphological variation, which is by and large a permanent “setting” for producing articulation, and voice quality setting, which is an impermanent and dynamic but semi-stable basis of articulation. The talk finishes with the consideration of preliminary computational modeling of the interaction between voice quality setting and segmental structure as a window into this less well-understood aspect of prosody. Laver, J. (1980). The phonetic description of voice quality. Cambridge University Press.
Cite as: Moisik, S.R. (2020) Modeling the influence of voice quality setting on segmental structure. Proc. Speech Prosody 2020,
@inproceedings{moisik20_speechprosody,
author={Scott Reid Moisik},
title={{Modeling the influence of voice quality setting on segmental structure}},
year=2020,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2020},
pages={}
}