Proceedings Fonetik 2009

F0 lowering, creaky voice, Danish stød and glottal stops may at first seem like a group of only vaguely related phenomena. However, a theory proposed by Jan Gauffin (JG) almost forty years ago puts them on a continuum of supralaryngeal constriction. The purpose of the present remarks is to briefly review JG:s work and to summarize evidence from current research that tends to reinforce many of his observations and lend strong support to his view of how the larynx is used in speech. In a companion paper at this conference, Tomas Riad presents a historical and dialectal account of relationships among low tones, creak and stød in Swedish and Danish that suggests that the development of these phenomena may derive from a common phonetic mechanism. JG:s supralaryngeal constriction dimension with F0 lowering ⇔ creak ⇔ glottal stop appears like a plausible candidate for such a mechanism. How is F0 lowered? In his handbook chapter on “Investigating the physiology of laryngeal structures” Hirose (1997:134) states: “Although the mechanism of pitch elevation seems quite clear, the mechanism of pitch lowering is not so straightforward. The contribution of the extrinsic laryngeal muscles such as sternohyoid is assumed to be significant, but their activity often appears to be a response to, rather than the cause of, a change in conditions. The activity does not occur prior to the physical effects of pitch change.” Honda (1995) presents a detailed review of the mechanisms of F0 control mentioning several studies of the role of the extrinsic laryngeal muscles motivated by the fact that F0 lowering is often accompanied by larynx lowering. However his conclusion comes close to that of Hirose. Jan Gauffin’s account At the end of the sixties Jan Gauffin began his experimental work on laryngeal mechanisms. As we return to his work today we will see that, not only did he acknowledge the incompleteness of our understanding of F0 lowering, he also tried to do something about it. JG collaborated with Osamu Fujimura at RILP at the University of Tokyo. There he had an opportunity to make films of the vocal folds using fiber optics. His data came mostly from Swedish subjects. He examined laryngeal behavior during glottal stops and with particular attention to the control of voice quality. Swedish word accents provided an opportunity to investigate the laryngeal correlates of F0 changes (Lindqvist-Gauffin 1969, 1972). Analyzing the laryngoscopic images JG became convinced that laryngeal behavior in speech involves anatomical structures not only at the glottal level but also above it. He became particularly interested in the mechanism known as the ‘aryepiglottic sphincter’. The evidence strongly suggested that this supraglottal structure plays a significant role in speech, both in articulation and in phonation. [Strictly speaking the ‘ary-epiglottic sphincter’ is not a circular muscle system. It invokes several muscular components whose joint action can functionally be said to be ‘sphincter-like’.] In the literature on comparative anatomy JG discovered the use of the larynx in protecting the lungs and the lower airways and its key roles in respiration and phonation (Negus 1949). The throat forms a three-tiered structure with valves at three levels (Pressman 1954): The aryepiglottic folds, ventricular folds and the true vocal folds. JG found that protective closure is brought about by invoking the “aryepiglottic muscles, oblique arytenoid muscles, and the thyroepiglottic muscles. The closure occurs above the glottis and is made between the tubercle of the epiglottis, the cuneiform cartilages, and the arytenoid cartilages”. An overall picture started to emerge both from established facts and from data that he gathered himself. He concluded that the traditional view of the function of the larynx in speech needed modification. The information conveyed by the fiberoptic data told him that in speech