Thanks for the pointer to suprasegmentals and prosody: these do, indeed, seem to cover exactly what I was asking about - though I haven't yet answered to my own satisfaction whether the means exist to describe, for instance, the identifying characteristics of male, 30+ estuary English speech, or the range of culturally-defined options this group has at its disposal when speaking.
The wikipedia entries on the various voices, including creaky, breathy, harsh and slack are also a joy - though I still don't quite know what any of these sound like: why, why, why doesn't wikipedia provide sound files :(
Finally, I wonder over what spread of languages and cultural groups this statement is true (from "prosody," wikipedia): "prosodic units, intonation units, or declination units... are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as a coherent pitch contour, and the gradual decline in pitch and lengthening of vowels over the duration of the unit, until the pitch and speed are reset to begin the next unit. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only seems to occur at these boundaries."
That sounds pretty specific: if it can be demonstrated in a large range of languages, it seems odd, maybe very interesting (though of course I have no idea what you'd do with such a tidbit of information).
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2007-05-26 08:20 pm (UTC)The wikipedia entries on the various voices, including creaky, breathy, harsh and slack are also a joy - though I still don't quite know what any of these sound like: why, why, why doesn't wikipedia provide sound files :(
Finally, I wonder over what spread of languages and cultural groups this statement is true (from "prosody," wikipedia):
"prosodic units, intonation units, or declination units... are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as a coherent pitch contour, and the gradual decline in pitch and lengthening of vowels over the duration of the unit, until the pitch and speed are reset to begin the next unit. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only seems to occur at these boundaries."
That sounds pretty specific: if it can be demonstrated in a large range of languages, it seems odd, maybe very interesting (though of course I have no idea what you'd do with such a tidbit of information).