As the vocal folds vibrate, the resulting vibration produces a "buzzing" quality to the speech, called voice or voicing or pronunciation.
Sound production involving only the glottis is called glottal.[citation needed] English has a voiceless glottal transition spelled "h". In many accents of English the glottal stop (made by pressing the folds together) is used as a variant allophone of the phoneme /t/ (and in some dialects, occasionally of /k/ and /p/); in some languages, this sound is a phoneme of its own.[citation needed]
Skilled players of the Australian didgeridoo restrict their glottal opening in order to produce the full range of timbres available on the instrument.[3]
The vibration produced is an essential component of voicedconsonants as well as vowels. If the vocal folds are drawn apart, air flows between them causing no vibration, as in the production of voiceless consonants.[citation needed]
Voiceless consonants include /f/, /s/, /ʃ/, /t͡ʃ/, /θ/, /p/, /t/, /k/, /ʍ/, and /h/.
Additional images
Larynx
The entrance to the larynx, viewed from behind.
The entrance to the larynx.
Glottis
Larynx, pharynx and tongue. Deep dissection.Posterior view.
Larynx, pharynx and tongue. Deep dissection.Posterior view.
Larynx, pharynx and tongue. Deep dissection.Posterior view.
References
^Ladefoged, Peter. 2006. A course in Phonetics. UCLA.
^WebMD (2009). "glottis". Webster's New World Medical Dictionary (3rd ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 178. ISBN 978-0-544-18897-6.
^Tarnopolsky, Alex; Fletcher, Neville; Hollenberg, Lloyd; Lange, Benjamin; Smith, John; Wolfe, Joe (2005). "Acoustics: The vocal tract and the sound of a didgeridoo". Nature. 436 (7047): 39. Bibcode:2005Natur.436...39T. doi:10.1038/43639a. PMID16001056.