Voicing, devoicing, and noise measures in Shanghainese voiced and voiceless glottal fricatives
Shanghainese has a rather rare voicing distinction between the glottal fricatives /h/ and /ɦ/. We evaluate the acoustic characteristics of this contrast in ten male and ten female speakers of urban Shanghainese dialect. Participants produced 20 CV words with a mid/low central vowel in a short carrier phrase. All legal consonant-tone combinations were used: /h/ preceded high, low, and short tones whereas /ɦ/ preceded low and short tones. Preliminary analyses suggested that the traditional “voiced” and “voiceless” labels for these sounds are not always phonetically accurate; hence we measure the duration of any voicing break relative to the entire phrase, as well as the harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) over the time. We expect longer relative voiceless durations and lower HNR measures for /h/ compared to /ɦ/. A question of interest is whether any gender differences emerge. A previous study on American English [Koenig, 2000, JSLHR 43, 1211–1228] found that men phonated through their productions of /h/ more often than women, and interpreted that finding in terms of male-female differences in vocal fold characteristics. A language that contrasts /h/ and /ɦ/ might minimize any such gender variation. Alternatively, the contrast might be realized in slightly different ways in men and women.