Voice quality of the nasal vowels in Chaoshan Chinese

Changhe Chen

Thursday, December 15th, 2022, 12.30pm – 1pm

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that nasal/nasalized vowels can be produced with breathier voice, possibly due to speech enhancement or misperception [1-2, 20]. Thus, this study investigates whether the nasal vowels of Chaoshan Chinese are also breathier than their oral congeners, and if so, how creakiness of the tone /212/ interacts with the nasality and breathier voice.

Electroglottograph (EGG) data were collected from native speakers of Chaoshan Chinese. Contact Quotient (CQ) data of 10 speakers show that the nasal vowels of this language can also be breathier than the oral vowels, but such difference in voice quality is optional and speaker dependent. In the condition of tone /212/ with periodic voice, creaky voice of the tone may override the redundant breathiness of the nasal vowels. However, when tone /212/ is produced with aperiodic voice as observed in the oral vowels, data of HNR05 show that the nasal counterparts are more periodic; a hypothesis is given to explain it.