Talk:Register (phonology)

Cambodian

Khmer is not really a register language anymore. It's been called a "restructured register language" because neither its pitch nor phonation type is phonemic. When these dropped off, they left behind a nice spread of diphthongs, and of course Khmer also distinguishes vowels according to length.

Creaky voice is misidentified

Creaky voice is listed here as mid to high but in actuality it is much lower than modal voice. This chart is incorrect and I am therefore removing it. See article on creaky voice (aka vocal fry) for a better understanding.Nrswanson (talk) 15:44, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

If the Burmese language article is incorrect, please correct there with refs on Burmese. There is no direct connection between phonation and tone. kwami (talk) 21:06, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Your comment doesn't make sense as pitch is a facter listed on your chart. And the point was that the chart doesn't match cited information on creaky voice article. This info. isn't cited so it should be removed.Nrswanson (talk) 23:44, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Once again, you're confusing phonation with pitch. Creaky voice isn't register, it's phonation - the article is wrong because you gutted that too. There are plenty of refs in the Burmese article. Add a (fact) tag if you like, but stop gutting articles of useful information just because you aren't familiar with it. kwami (talk) 01:42, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

And once again you are not understanding the relation between pitch and the phonatory process. Certain types of phonation can only be physically produced at certain pitches. Creaky voice can only be produced at pitches below the normal speaking register, modal voice. It is physically impossible to have a high pitched creaky voice which your chart states.Nrswanson (talk) 02:11, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Please read this article. Maybe it will help you understand creaky voice. http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page10.htm Notice how the article says "at a low frequency". I have other sources, not online, that give specific hertz ranges for creaky voice. So don't tell me pitch isn't a factor in phonation. It definitely is.Nrswanson (talk) 02:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

That article does not state what you claim. It says Creak phonation [is] produced ... at a very low frequency, and that The frequency of vibrations in falsetto phonation is noticeably higher than in modal voice. How then do you explain creaky falsetto compound phonation[1], if they cannot overlap in pitch? Low frequency of pulsation doesn't mean low pitch of voicing. Your ref considers 'creaky voice' to be a compound phonation of creak plus modal voice. Presumably, then, it would have something approaching the range of pitch found in modal voicing; at any rate, you source never says otherwise. It is rather easy to sing in a high creaky voice, even if it is not quite as natural as a low voice. The irregular vibrations of the fry are not the vibrations that are perceived as pitch.

Ladefoged (SOWL:55) says,

Creaky voice is the term we will use for a mode of vibration of the vocal folds in which the arytenoid cartilages are much closer together than in modal voice. Creaky voice also involves a great deal of tension in the intrinsic laryngeal musculature, so that the vocal folds no longer vibrate as a whole. Sometimes the parts of the vocal folds close to the arytenoid are held too tightly together to be able to vibrate at all; on other occasions the ligamental and arytenoid parts vibrate separately, so that they are out of phase with one another. This can produce pulses with alternating high and low amplitudes. If they are almost exactly 180° out of phase with one another they may produce an apparent increase, often an approximate doubling, of the rate of occurrence of glottal pulses.

He then shows waveforms of Fulani modal vs. creaky voiced /d/. The number of voicing pulses is the same (6 each), but the creaky ones are more ragged in shape.

P. 317 he gives examples of creaky Jalapa Mazatec vowels bearing both high and low tones. Yes, it's entirely possible that the creaky tones are relatively low compared to the modal tones, but you obviously can have a high creaky tone, as in Burmese. He says,

As a general rule, vowels with stiff or creaky voice have more energy in the harmonics is the region of the first and second formants than those with modal voice. [Nothing about a lower fundamental frequency.] There is also a tendency (though not in all languages) for vowels with creaky voice to have a more irregular vocal cord pulse rate (more jitter) ...

He goes on with measurements that show the fundamental frequency is ~10dB weaker in creaky than modal voice when compared to the first harmonic. kwami (talk) 03:27, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah. I am beginning to understand. And I just figured something out which made things clear to me. The terms "creak" and "creaky voice" are two different things in phonology. Creak or vocal fry is a phonation type whereas "creaky voice" is a compound phonation. And I think the pitch limits in Greene's study were to measure simple phonations and not compound phonations. Perhaps an article explaining compound phonations would be a good addition to wikipedia. And you are right that creaky voice should have its own page.Nrswanson (talk) 06:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I don't mind merging, if it's done right, I just didn't want things obscured. But since there is a whole series of linguistics phonation articles, I don't mind them being separate either.

Looking over some of my comments, I'm afraid I've been a bit of an asshole. Or quite abrupt anyway. Sorry, just tired I guess.

I've never seen Greene's concept of compound registers before, maybe because it's not a phonemic distinction anywhere, but it makes sense. kwami (talk) 11:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Well I think vocal registration is used more by speech pathologists, which Greene is a highly notable one, in order to specify certain kinds of speech disorders. Also, it is used by teachers of vocal music but there is not as consistant of an approach to register understanding in vocal pedagogy as there is in speech pathology. The term vocal fry is in the phonetics dictionary as the American name for "creak". And the same phonetics dictionary does say "creak" and "creaky voice are two different things, identifying "creak" as a simple phonation and "creaky voice" a compound phonation between the modal voice and creak. I think the vocal registers are really just identifications of certain kinds of basic phonations that are un-mixed with other kinds and that these phonatory processes occur only within a certain pitch area of the voice. The point at which these registers begin and end is an important focus becuase they can cause breaks or lifts in the voice. Has your voice ever cracked? Well there is a theory that that is caused by uneasy transition between vocal registers. So perhaps pitch isn't as important of a focus within phonation but it is an important focus in vocal registration.Nrswanson (talk) 16:38, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Got a couple refs from Google books: a quote for a definition of the term, and for the Burmese example. Maddieson specifies that creaky phonation is associated with high pitch in Burmese. I kept things at a minimum, because the details vary from language to language, and therefore the use of the word varies depending on the background of the author. There are other statements in these two sources which don't agree with each other, or else don't agree with other articles I've read elsewhere. kwami (talk) 06:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

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language —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.234.18.212 (talk) 22:31, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Procedural listing: On 26 November, 2016, an anonymous user placed {{Merge}} templates on Register (phonology) and Register complex. The user left no edit summary on either edit, and did not begin a discussion. I've directed the "Discuss" links in both templates to this section to prevent separate discussions arising. Cnilep (talk) 07:39, 28 November 2016 (UTC)