Speech and Hearing Topic 15- Unusual forms of sound

Propagation velocity

is the speed at which a sound wave travels through a medium (like air, water, or bone)

• propagation velocity of sound in air ( the medium ) is approximately 760 miles/hour

• or 340 (344) meter/second

• This is how fast the pulse travels

Helium Speech

• Helium changes the speed of sound (transmission) [it is about three times faster than air]— therefore the resonance pattern is different.

What is snoring?

• Muscles in the throat relax too much

• Attempt to breath through small opening in the back of teh throat

• Soft palate vibrates (snoring

• 30% of women and 40% of men do it!

What is whistling?

• The production of sound by means of carefully controlling a stream of air flowing through a small opening through the lips.

• The tube that is created functions as a resonant chamber

Variations in speech

• range of normal speech:

• Adult male: 85-185 Hz fundamental frequency

• female: 165- 255 Hz fundamental frequency

Vocal Fry

• (creaky voice/ pulse mode) A vocal mode in which the vocal folds vibrate at such low frequency that the individual vibrations can be heard.

What is laughing?

• The physiological response to happiness and humor

• Evolutionary not clear how it had emerged

  • from a social-physical play like tickling

• A set of gestures (facial muscles; lifting the upper lip);

• the epiglottis blocks the larynx- irregular air intake (gasping);

• Tear ducts may be activated

• sounds are produced about every 210 ms

What is singing?

• Sustained speech;

• Exploitation of potential of variation: duration, fundamental frequency, intonation (melody), juncture, stress, cavity, articulator movement and positioning

What is throat singing?

• In throat-singing, a singer can produce two or more notes simultaneously through specialized vocalization technique taking advantage of the throat’s resonance characteristic.

What is screaming?

• High amplitude voice use over extended time

• yelling will strain the vocal folds

• screams provide a frequency range that is distinctive from communicative speech

• speech are a biological tool to signal alarms

What is crying like a baby?

• A biological adaptation mechanism to attract maternal contact

• Spectrographic studies show that baby cries can be typical for specific medical conditions, e.g. cri du chat syndrome (chromosome 5)

What is whispering?

• No phonation is produced

• There can still be laryngeal adjustments (remember the /h/); the vocal folds can be partially abducted and tensed to develop turbulence in the airstream

• A whisper can cause vocal fatigue!

• Compare production of a prolonged /a/ in modal phonation with /a/ in whispered production!

Ventriloquism

• Performance in which a person modifies (vocal tract and articulator positioning) speech such that it suggests that there is another source of speech;

• Based on the fact that acoustic effects are produced in many ways (not just the standard ways);

• Based on the “active’ role of the listener (see e.g. phoneme restoration)

Esophageal Speech

• Air is injected into the upper esophagus and then released in a controlled manner to create sound used to produce speech.

• Esophageal speech is a learned skill that requires speech training and much practice

Parabuccal Speech

is a type of speech technique used by people who don’t have a functioning larynx

• The person traps air inside he cheeks (buccal cavity)

• Then releases it in a controlled way to create sound, which they can shape into speech using their mouth lips and teeth

Cover-body model of vocal folds

• Cover: mostly mucous membrane (pliable)

• Body: mostly muscle (stiff)

• Body and cover have different vibratory properties

• Intrinsic laryngeal muscles determine how tightly the body and civer are connected in phonation.