The Role of Lexical Stress on the Use of Vocal Fry in Young Adult Female Speakers.
OBJECTIVE
Vocal fry is a voice register often used by young adult women for sociolinguistic purposes. Some acoustic correlates of lexical stress, however, appear incompatible with the use of vocal fry. The objective of this study was to systematically examine the role of lexical stress in the use of vocal fry by young adult women.


METHODS
This is a semi-randomized controlled laboratory study.


METHODS
Fifty female undergraduate students were recorded repeating one-, two-, three-, and four-syllable nonwords that conformed to English phonotactics. Nonwords were presented in order from shorter to longer lengths, with stimuli randomized within syllable length. Perceptual analyses of recordings were augmented by acoustic analyses to identify each syllable in which vocal fry occurred.


RESULTS
Eighty-six percent of participants produced at least one episode of vocal fry. Vocal fry was more likely to occur in unstressed than stressed position, and the likelihood increased as distance from the stressed syllable increased. There was considerable variability in the use of vocal fry. Frequent and infrequent users varied on the degree to which they used vocal fry in single-syllable nonwords.


CONCLUSIONS
Vocal fry use persists among young adult women even in the absence of syntactic and pragmatic influences. Lexical stress appeared to dramatically reduce the use of vocal fry. Patterns of vocal fry use appeared to be different for frequent and infrequent users of this vocal register.
Louisiana State University, 84 Hatcher Hall, Field House Dr, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Electronic address: toddandrewgibson@lsu.edu.
Todd A
TA
Gibson
D000162:Acoustics; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D012737:Sex Factors; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult
Lexical stress; Perceptual judgments; Register; Vocal fry; Young adult women