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| Breathy | |
|---|---|
| ◌̤ | |
| ◌ʱ | |
| Encoding | |
| Entity(decimal) | ̤ |
| Unicode(hex) | U+0324 |
Breathy voice (also calledmurmured voice,whispery voice,soughing andsusurration) is aphonation in which thevocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape[1] which produces a sighing-like sound. A simple breathy phonation,[ɦ] (not actually africative consonant, as a literal reading of the IPA chart would suggest), can sometimes be heard as anallophone of English/h/ between vowels, such as in the wordbehind, for some speakers.
In the context of theIndo-Aryan languages likeSanskrit andHindi and comparativeIndo-European studies, breathy consonants are often calledvoiced aspirated, as in the Hindi and Sanskrit stops normally denotedbh, dh, ḍh, jh, andgh and the reconstructedProto-Indo-European phonemesbʰ,dʰ,ǵʰ,gʰ,gʷʰ.From an articulatory perspective, that terminology is inaccurate[citation needed], as breathy voice is a different type of phonation fromaspiration. However, breathy and aspirated stops are acoustically similar in that in both cases there is a delay in the onset of full voicing. In the history of several languages, likeGreek and somevarieties of Chinese, breathy stops have developed into aspirated stops.
There is some confusion as to the nature of murmured phonation. TheInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and authors such asPeter Ladefoged equate phonemically contrastive murmur withbreathy voice in which the vocal folds are held with lower tension (and farther apart) than in modal voice, with a concomitant increase in airflow and slower vibration of the glottis. In that model, murmur is a point in a continuum of glottal aperture between modal voice and breath phonation (voicelessness). Others, such as Laver, Catford, Trask and the authors of theVoice Quality Symbols (VoQS), equate murmur withwhispery voice in which the vocal folds or, at least, the anterior part of the vocal folds vibrates, as in modal voice, but the arytenoid cartilages are held apart to allow a large turbulent airflow between them. In that model, murmur is a compound phonation of approximately modal voice plus whisper. It is possible that the realization of murmur varies among individuals or languages.[citation needed] The IPA uses the term "breathy voice", but VoQS uses the term "whispery voice". Both accept the term "murmur", popularised by Ladefoged.[2]
A stop with breathy release or a breathy nasal is transcribed in theIPA as[bʱ],[dʱ],[ɡʱ],[mʱ] etc. or as[b̤],[d̤],[ɡ̤],[m̤] etc. Breathy vowels are most often written[a̤],[e̤], etc. Indication of breathy voice by using subscript diaeresis was approved in or before June 1976 by members of the council ofInternational Phonetic Association.[3]
In VoQS, the notation{V̤} is used for whispery voice (or murmur), and{Vʰ} is used for breathy voice. Some authors, such as Laver, suggest the alternative transcription ⟨ḅạɾ⟩ (rather than IPA ⟨b̤a̤ɾ⟩) as the correct analysis ofGujarati/bɦaɾ/, but it could be confused with the replacement of modal voicing in voiced segments withwhispered phonation, conventionally transcribed with the diacritic◌̣.[4]
There are several ways to produce breathy sounds such as[ɦ]. One is to hold the vocal folds apart, so that they are lax as they are for[h], but to increase the volume of airflow so that they vibrate loosely. A second is to bring the vocal folds closer together along their entire length than in voiceless[h], but not as close as in modally voiced sounds such as vowels. This results in an airflow intermediate between[h] and vowels, and is the case with English intervocalic /h/. A third is to constrict the glottis, but separate thearytenoid cartilages that control one end. This results in the vocal folds being drawn together for voicing in the back, but separated to allow the passage of large volumes of air in the front. This is the situation with Hindi[citation needed]
The distinction between the latter two of these realizations, vocal folds somewhat separated along their length (breathy voice) and vocal folds together with the arytenoids making an opening (whispery voice), is phonetically relevant inWhite Hmong (Hmong Daw).[5]
A number of languages use breathy voicing in a phonologically contrastive way. ManyIndo-Aryan languages, such asHindi, typically have a four-way contrast among plosives and affricates (voiced, breathy,tenuis, aspirated) and a two-way contrast among nasals (voiced, breathy). TheNguni languages within the southern branch of theBantu languages, includingPhuthi,Xhosa,Zulu,Southern Ndebele andSwazi, also have contrastive breathy voice. In the case of Xhosa, there is a four-way contrast analogous to Indic in oralclicks, and similarly a two-way contrast among nasal clicks, but a three-way contrast among plosives and affricates (breathy, aspirated, andejective), and two-way contrasts among fricatives (voiceless and breathy) and nasals (voiced and breathy).[citation needed]
In some Bantu languages, historically breathy stops have been phonetically devoiced,[6] but the four-way contrast in the system has been retained.In all five of the southeastern Bantu languages named, the breathy stops (even if they are realised phonetically as devoiced aspirates) have a marked tone-lowering (or tone-depressing) effect on the followingtautosyllabic vowels. For this reason, such stop consonants are frequently referred to in the local linguistic literature as "depressor" stops.[citation needed]
Swazi, and to a greater extent Phuthi, display good evidence that breathy voicing can be used as a morphological property independent of any consonant voicing value. For example, in both languages, the standard morphological mechanism for achieving themorphosyntacticcopula is to simply execute the noun prefix syllable as breathy (or "depressed").[citation needed]
InPortuguese, vowels after thestressed syllable can be pronounced with breathy voice.[7]
Gujarati is unusual incontrasting breathy vowels and consonants:બાર/baɾ/ 'twelve',બહાર/ba̤ɾ/ 'outside',ભાર/bʱaɾ/ 'burden'.[8][page needed]
Tsumkwe Juǀʼhoan makes the following rare distinctions :/nǂʱao/ fall, land (of a bird etc.);/nǂʱao̤/ walk;/nǂʱaˤo/ herb species; and /n|ʱoaᵑ/ greedy person; /n|oaʱᵑ/ cat.[9]
Breathy stops inPunjabi lost their phonation, merging with voiceless and voiced stops in various positions, and a system of high and lowtones developed in syllables that formerly had these sounds. Breathy voice can also be observed in place ofdebuccalized coda/s/ insome dialects of Spanish, e.g.[ˈtoðoɦloˈθiɦnehsomˈblaŋkoh] fortodosloscisnessonblancos.[citation needed]