Physiological correlates of intonation patterns

An experiment has been performed to assess to what degree laryngeal muscle activity and subglottal air pressure affect the rate of vocal cord vibration in speech. Attention has been limited to those changes in the rate of vocal cord vibration that are associated with the physiological implementation of prosodic phenomena such as intonation and prominence. Subglottal air pressure was measured directly through a catheter inserted between the cricoid and thyroid cartilages. Using hooked-wire electrodes, the electromyographic activity was recorded in the right- and left-side cricothyroid muscle and in the sternohyoid, sternothyroid, and thyrohyoid muscles. The data were collected for one subject, a native speaker of Dutch. The results of the experiment show that, in this particular speaker, (1) cricothyroid muscle activity bears the most direct relationship to all major F0 changes, in that the contraction of this muscle raises F0 while its relaxation has an F0 lowering effect: (2) subglottal air pressure controls the gradually falling base line of the F0 contour and gives support to a rapid F0 drop if it occurs on the utterance-final syllable; and (3) the sternohyoid, sternothyroid, and thyrohyoid muscles have no direct effect on F0. Subject Classification: 70.20, 70.70.