Visualisation of hypopharyngeal cavities and vocal-tract acoustic modelling.
The hypopharyngeal cavities consist of the laryngeal cavity and bilateral piriform fossa, constituting the bottom part of the vocal tract near the larynx. Visualisation of these cavities with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques reveals that during speech, the laryngeal cavity takes the form of a long-neck flask and the piriform fossa takes the form of a goblet of varying shapes: the former diminishes greatly in whispering and the latter disappears during deep inhalation. These cavities have been shown to exert significant acoustic effects at higher frequency spectra. In this study, acoustic experiments were conducted for male and female mechanical vocal tracts with the results that acoustic effects of those cavities determine the frequency spectra above 2 kHz, giving rise to peaks and zeros. An acoustic model of vowel production was proposed with three components: voice source, hypopharyngeal cavities and vocal tract proper, which provides effective means in controlling voice quality and expressing individual vocal characteristics.
Honda
Kiyoshi
K
Phonetics and Phonology Laboratories, UMR7018 CNRS-University of Paris III, Paris, France. khonda@sannet.ne.jp
Kitamura
Tatsuya
T
Takemoto
Hironori
H
Adachi
Seiji
S
Mokhtari
Parham
P
Takano
Sayoko
S
Nota
Yukiko
Y
Hirata
Hiroyuki
H
Fujimoto
Ichiro
I
Shimada
Yasuhiro
Y
Masaki
Shinobu
S
Fujita
Satoru
S
Dang
Jianwu
J
D000162:Acoustics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007013:Hypopharynx / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008953:Models, Anatomic; D014827:Vocal Cords / Q000033:anatomy & histology*