Creaky voice usage among French female learners of English: acoustic and electroglottographic study Zakaria TOUHAMI, Paris Diderot University—Paris 7 Sociolinguistics Symposium 21 University of Murcia, Spain June 15th – 18th,

1.-Background This study investigates phonation contrasts across languages through the example of creaky voice (vocal fry) among 12 female French speakers of English. Creaky voice is used as both a tool for age, gender, and social distinction, and for phonological contrasts within some of the world’s languages (Gick, Wilson, & Derrick, 2013). Creaky voice does not appear in the same proportion in French and English (Esling, 1982). A review of literature shows that voice quality settings of French and English are different. Creaky voice settings are more frequent in English than in French in which it is cited to have breathy voice settings (Honikman, 1964). Creaky voice is more common among young American women than their male counterparts (Wolk et al., 2011; Yuasa, 2010). 2

2.-Purpose The habitual use of creaky voice speech patterns among American women has aroused the interest of teachers of phonetics to the importance of including sociophonetic indicators in their teaching of English pronunciation to French learners at University level at least for those who aim or have adopted an American accent since two models of English pronunciation are taught in French universities. This may help the students to socially position themselves by means of their pronunciation. We want to measure whether or not French learners display more creaky voice phonation in English than they do in French. And whether or not they will show more creakiness after we have drawn their attention to this vocal pattern in the speech of young American women. 3

3.-Creaky voice? Creaky voice is described as ‘periodic bursts of air through a very small chink near the front end of the vocal folds. This generates a tapping sound’ (Catford, 1964). It is physiologically characterized by a glottal area function that has sharp, short pulses followed by long closed glottal interval (Childers & Lee, 1991). The vocal folds are held together loosely, and air bubbles up through them. Consequently, airflow rate is relatively low compared to that in modal phonation (Murry, 1971). Acoustically, creaky voice is characterized by very low values in fundamental frequency (F0 ≃ 50 Hz) (Hollien & Jackson, 1973). The auditory perception of this phonation type has been described as similar to ‘rapid series of taps like a stick being run along a railing’. 4

4.- Methodology 5 Figure 1. The American native speaker 'AP' during the recording session. All of the data were collected with a two-channel EGG (EG2-PCX2 system by Glottal Enterprises) and a headband microphone. The synchronous EGG and audio signals were digitized to PCM stereo format with a sampling rate of Hz and a 16 bit quantization (as recommended by the manufacturer).

The corpus consisted of 48 text readings of an extract from Antoine de Saint- Exupery’s ‘Le Petit Prince’ and its translation into English twice. (12 speakers × 2 texts in English × 2 texts in French). All the recordings took place in a sound-attenuated room. Subjects were asked to come between 11 a.m. and 4 a.m. in order to avoid vocal harshness that can result from morning or late evening phonations (Ormezzano, 2000). First reading (as naturally as possible)=> listening to the reading of a native female American speaker in English (characterized by a creaky voice ratio of 18% of the total reading duration)=> Second reading (subjects instructed to read trying to imitate our model’s reading, making more efforts on the quality of their voices). We extracted the speakers’ pauses from the recorded data. With these exclusions, we managed to create a corpus of 51 minutes and 37 seconds. 6

5.- Data analysis All the sound files were annotated with Praat into 3 tiers: creak occurrences on the first tier, syllable divisions on the second tier, and transcription of the speakers’ reading in the third tier. Any creaky chunk uninterrupted by modal phonation or a syllable boundary was considered an occurrence. 7 Figure 2. Annotation of the utterance 'boas from the inside' of speaker AD

6.- Results Creaky voice occurrences: 8 All speakers in the study show a higher rate of creaky voice occurrences in English and in the second reading after listening to the American model’s reading. Statistically speaking, a significant effect of both Language (F (1.11) = 45.15, p = 3.29 × ) and Reading Task (F (1.11) = 22.02, p = 6.5× ) was found. The interaction is also significant (F (1.11) = 6.90, p <.02). It means that there is a significant effect of Reading Task on Languge. Figure 3. Percentage of creaky voice occurrences on the total number of syllables according to language and reading task (+/- 95% confidence interval).

Creaky voice duration: 9 The significance for both Language (F (1.11) = 48.02, p = 2.49 × ) and and Reading Task (F (1.11) = 21.24, p = 7.5× ) illustrated the same trend that we observed in the previous analysis. In other words, all the speakers in the study displayed more creaky voice in English and in the second reading after listening to the American model’s reading. The interaction is also significant (F (1.11) = 10.34, p <.008). In other words, the effect of Language varies according to the level of Reading Task. Figure 4. Percentage of creaky voice duration on toral speaking time depending on language and reading task (+/- 95% confidence interval).

10 Figure 5. Percentage of creaky voice duration on total speaking time by speakers according to language and reading task (+/- 95% confidence interval).

7.- Conclusions, implications and further research This study of creaky voice usage among French learners of English confirmed that our learners displayed more creakiness in English than they did in French. This suggests they are, to a certain extent, aware of a difference in phonation type between their L1 and their L2. The study also shows that French learners’ awareness of – and ability to produce – creaky voice in American English can be raised simply by listening to a short sample of speech containing creaky voice. This finding has clear implications for the teaching of English pronunciation to French learners. In our study, we relied on a reading task only. However, it has been found that creaky voice seems to be more robust in spontaneous environments (Benoist-Lucy & Pillot-Loiseau, 2013). We therefore assume that our results would have been even more obvious with spontaneous speech. We are currently carrying out a perception test in order to investigate how creaky voice is perceived by native speakers of English when used by female French learners of English. 11

8.- References Catford, J. C. (1964). Phonation Types: The Classification of Some Laryngeal Components of Speech Production. In Abercombie, D. Fry, D. B. MacCarthy, P. A. D. Scott, N. C. Trim, J. L. M. (Éd.), In Honour of Daniel Jones (p. 26 ‑ 37). London: Longmans. Murry, T. (1971). Subglottal pressure and airflow measures during vocal fry phonation. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 14(3), 544 ‑ 551. Hollien, H., & Jackson, B. (1973). Normative data on the speaking fundamental characteristics of young adult males. Journal of Phonetics, p. 117 ‑ 120. Pegoraro Krook, M. I. (1988). Speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of normal Swedish subjects obtained by glottal frequency analysis. Folia Phoniatrica, 40(2), 82 ‑ 90. Ylitalo, R., & Hammarberg, B. (2000). Voice characteristics, effects of voice therapy, and long-term follow-up of contact granuloma patients. Journal of Voice: Official Journal of the Voice Foundation, 14(4), 557 ‑ 566. Wolk, L., B. Abdelli-Beruh, N., & Slavin, D. (2011). Habitual Use of Vocal Fry in Young Adult Female Speakers. Journal of Voice, 26(3), 111 ‑ 116. Yuasa, I. P. (2010). Creaky voice: A new feminine voice quality for young urban-oriented upwardly mobile American women? American Speech, 85(3), 315 ‑ 337. Baken, R. J., & Orlikoff, R. F. (2000). Laryngeal function. In Clinical Measurement of Speech and Voice (Thomson Learning., p. 393 ‑ 451). Kane, J., Drugman, T., & Gobl, C. (2013). Improved automatic detection of creak. Computer Speech & Language, 27(4), 1028 ‑