Helena M. Hanson and Erika S. Chuang

Hanson and Chuang analyzed the waveforms and spectra of three nonhigh English vowels (/æ/, /ʌ/, and /ɛ/) from 21 male speakers to obtain acoustic information on F1, open quotient, spectral tilt and aspiration noise. They then made comparisons with the same data collected from 22 female speakers [Hanson and Chuang 1997]. While there was considerable overlap, the male data showed lower average values and less interspeaker variation. In particular, they identify H1-F3 as a reliable measure for differentiating male from female speech (male H1 was on average 9.6 dB lower relative to F3 than female [1064]). These results are consistent with previous findings that (presumably English-speaking, although Hanson and Chuang nowhere discuss crosslinguistic issues or even identify the language subjects are speaking) men have a more complete glottal closure than women in modal speech (which I understand to mean that male modal phonation in English is less breathy than female phonation, aligning Hanson and Chuang with studies [e.g. Henton and Bladon 1986 below] that identify female phonation as breathier in e.g. British English and perhaps against studies [e.g. Redi and Shattuck-Hufnagel 2000 below] that may identify American English male phonation as less creaky. Further, a “second glottal pulse” (1070) in men is identified that has the effect of attenuating certain harmonics (depending on length of delay after main pulse), further differentiating the spectral profile of male modal American English speech.


Obvious dialectal, age, text, and other factors do not appear to be controlled for or even referred to. While these factors may not interest Hanson and Chuang, whose major concern is with the synthesis of natural-sounding male and female “General American” voices, they are of central relevance to my proposed study. I can, however, count this study as an example of putative higher breathiness levels in female than male speech in English, a contention which may be supported or complicated by my West Coast Canadian speakers. Article appeared in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 106/1.… (más)