Voice or voicing is a term used in
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
and
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
to characterize
speech sound
In phonetics and linguistics, a phone is any distinct speech sound or gesture, regardless of whether the exact sound is critical to the meanings of words.
In contrast, a phoneme is a speech sound in a given language that, if swapped with another ...
s (usually
consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
). Speech sounds can be described as either
voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...
(otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts:
*Voicing can refer to the ''articulatory process'' in which the
vocal folds
In humans, vocal cords, also known as vocal folds or voice reeds, are folds of throat tissues that are key in creating sounds through vocalization. The size of vocal cords affects the pitch of voice. Open when breathing and vibrating for speec ...
vibrate, its primary use in
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds.
*It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but may not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. That is the term's primary use in
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
: to describe
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s; while in
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
its primary use is to describe phones.
For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters "s" and "z". The two sounds are transcribed as and to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciations, depending on the context. If one places the fingers on the voice box (i.e. the location of the
Adam's apple in the upper throat), one can feel a
vibration
Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. The word comes from Latin ''vibrationem'' ("shaking, brandishing"). The oscillations may be periodic, such as the motion of a pendulum—or random, su ...
while
is pronounced but not with
(For a more detailed, technical explanation, see
modal voice
Modal voice is the vocal register used most frequently in speech and singing in most languages. It is also the term used in linguistics for the most common phonation of vowels. The term "modal" refers to the resonant mode of vocal folds; that is ...
and
phonation.) In most
European languages
Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Ro ...
, with a notable exception being
Icelandic,
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s and other
sonorants (consonants such as ''m, n, l,'' and ''r)'' are
modally voiced.
Yidiny has no underlyingly voiceless consonants, only voiced ones.
When used to classify speech sounds, voiced and unvoiced are merely labels used to group
phones
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into ele ...
and
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s together for the purposes of classification.
Notation
The
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
has distinct letters for many voiceless and voiced pairs of consonants (the
obstruents), such as . In addition, there is a diacritic for voicedness: ⟨⟩. Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiceless sounds.
In
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
, the symbols are encoded and .
The
extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet
The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internatio ...
have a notation for partial voicing and devoicing as well as for
prevoicing Prevoicing, in phonetics, is voicing before the onset of a consonant or beginning with the onset of the consonant but ending before its release. In the extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology, prevoicing is transcrib ...
:
Partial voicing can mean light but continuous voicing, discontinuous voicing, or discontinuities in the degree of voicing. For the example, could be an with (some) voicing in the middle and could be with (some) devoicing in the middle.
Partial voicing can also be indicated in the normal IPA with transcriptions like and .
In English
The distinction between the articulatory use of voice and the phonological use rests on the distinction between
phone (represented between square brackets) and
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
(represented between slashes). The difference is best illustrated by a rough example.
The English word ''nods'' is made up of a sequence of phonemes, represented symbolically as , or the sequence of , , , and . Each symbol is an abstract representation of a phoneme. That awareness is an inherent part of speakers' mental grammar that allows them to recognise words.
However, phonemes are not sounds in themselves. Rather, phonemes are, in a sense, converted to phones before being spoken. The phoneme, for instance, can actually be pronounced as either the phone or the phone since is frequently devoiced, even in fluent speech, especially at the end of an utterance. The sequence of phones for ''nods'' might be transcribed as or , depending on the presence or strength of this devoicing. While the phone has articulatory voicing, the phone does not have it.
What complicates the matter is that for English, consonant phonemes are classified as either voiced or voiceless even though it is not the primary distinctive feature between them. Still, the classification is used as a stand-in for phonological processes, such as vowel lengthening that occurs before voiced consonants but not before unvoiced consonants or vowel quality changes (the sound of the vowel) in some dialects of English that occur before unvoiced but not voiced consonants. Such processes allow English speakers to continue to perceive difference between voiced and voiceless consonants when the devoicing of the former would otherwise make them sound identical to the latter.
English has four pairs of
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
phonemes that can be divided into a table by
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
and voicing. The voiced fricatives can readily be felt to have voicing throughout the duration of the phone especially when they occur between vowels.
However, in the class of consonants called
stop
Stop may refer to:
Places
* Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States
* Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Facilities
* Bus stop
* Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck d ...
s, such as , the contrast is more complicated for English. The "voiced" sounds do not typically feature articulatory voicing throughout the sound. The difference between the unvoiced stop phonemes and the voiced stop phonemes is not just a matter of whether articulatory voicing is present or not. Rather, it includes
when voicing starts (if at all), the presence of
aspiration (airflow burst following the release of the closure) and the duration of the closure and aspiration.
English voiceless stops are generally
aspirated at the beginning of a stressed syllable, and in the same context, their voiced counterparts are voiced only partway through. In more narrow
phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the I ...
, the voiced symbols are maybe used only to represent the presence of articulatory voicing, and aspiration is represented with a superscript ''h''.
When the consonants come at the end of a syllable, however, what distinguishes them is quite different. Voiceless phonemes are typically unaspirated,
glottalized
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consona ...
and the closure itself may not even be released, making it sometimes difficult to hear the difference between, for example, ''light'' and ''like''. However, auditory cues remain to distinguish between voiced and voiceless sounds, such as what has been described above, like the length of the preceding vowel.
Other English sounds, the vowels and sonorants, are normally fully voiced. However, they may be devoiced in certain positions, especially after aspirated consonants, as in ''coffee'', ''tree'', and ''play'' in which the voicing is delayed to the extent of missing the sonorant or vowel altogether.
Degrees of voicing
There are two variables to degrees of voicing: intensity (discussed under
phonation), and duration (discussed under
voice onset time
In phonetics, voice onset time (VOT) is a feature of the production of stop consonants. It is defined as the length of time that passes between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, or, accor ...
). When a sound is described as "half voiced" or "partially voiced", it is not always clear whether that means that the voicing is weak (low intensity) or if the voicing occurs during only part of the sound (short duration). In the case of English, it is the latter.
Juǀʼhoansi and some of its neighboring languages are typologically unusual in having contrastive partially-voiced consonants. They have aspirate and
ejective
In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some ...
consonants, which are normally incompatible with voicing, in voiceless and voiced pairs. The consonants start out voiced but become voiceless partway through and allow normal aspiration or ejection. They are and and a similar series of clicks.
Voice and tenseness
There are languages with two sets of contrasting
obstruents that are labelled vs. even though there is no involvement of voice (or voice onset time) in that contrast. That happens, for instance, in several
Alemannic German dialects. Because voice is not involved, this is explained as a contrast in
tenseness
In phonology, tenseness or tensing is, most broadly, the pronunciation of a sound with greater muscular effort or constriction than is typical. More specifically, tenseness is the pronunciation of a vowel with less centralization (i.e. either mo ...
, called a
fortis and lenis contrast.
There is a hypothesis that the contrast between fortis and lenis consonants is related to the contrast between voiceless and voiced consonants. That relation is based on sound perception as well as on sound production, where consonant voice, tenseness and
length are only different manifestations of a common sound feature.
See also
*
Consonant voicing and devoicing
In phonology, voicing (or sonorization) is a sound change where a voiceless consonant becomes voiced due to the influence of its phonological environment; shift in the opposite direction is referred to as devoicing or desonorization. Most commo ...
*
Dyscravia
Dyscravia is a voicing substitution dysgraphia, i.e. a type of writing disorder in which the affected person confuses letters denoting sounds that differ in their voicing attribute (e.g. writing "dap" instead of "tap" or "tash" instead of "dash"). ...
*
List of language disorders
The following is a list of language disorders. A language disorder is a condition defined as a condition that limits or altogether stops natural speech
Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combina ...
*
Manner of articulation
*
Phonation
*
Place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
*
Voice onset time
In phonetics, voice onset time (VOT) is a feature of the production of stop consonants. It is defined as the length of time that passes between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, or, accor ...
*
Voicelessness
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Voice (Phonetics)
Phonetics