Phonation types: a cross-linguistic overview

Cross-linguistic phonetic studies have yielded several insights into the possible states of the glottis. People can control the glottis so that they produce speech sounds with not only regular voicing vibrations at a range of different pitches, but also harsh, soft, creaky, breathy and a variety of other phonation types. These are controllable variations in the actions of the glottis, not just personal idiosyncratic possibilities or involuntary pathological actions. What appears to be an uncontrollable pathological voice quality for one person might be a necessary part of the set of phonological contrasts for someone else. For example, some American English speakers may have a very breathy voice that is considered to be pathological, while Gujarati speakers need a similar voice quality to distinguish the word /baa|/ meaning ‘outside’ from the word /ba|/ meaning ‘twelve’ (Pandit 1957, Ladefoged 1971). Likewise, an American English speaker may have a very creaky voice quality similar to the one employed by speakers of Jalapa Mazatec to distinguish the word /ja0! / meaning ‘he wears’ from the word /ja! / meaning ‘tree’ (Kirk et al. 1993). As was noted some time ago, one person's voice disorder might be another person's phoneme (Ladefoged 1983).