Time Course of the First Formant Bandwidth

Abstract

Phonetic characteristics of modal or non-modal voice qualities, such as open quotient, spectral tilt, the first formant bandwidth, and the degree of noise, have been measured in terms of the relative amplitude difference between the first two harmonics, the relative amplitude difference between the first harmonic and formant peaks, the first formant bandwidth, and harmonic-to-noise ratio, or subjective noise ratings. It was observed that one of the characteristics of breathy voice is an increased first formant bandwidth (Klatt & Klatt 1990) and that breathiness varies over time within a vowel (Silverman et al. 1995). It is predicted from these observations that the first formant bandwidth varies over time as well as across phonation types. This paper investigates the time course of the first formant bandwidth of the vowel /a/ in tokens of type /Ca/ and /NCa/, where C is 8 Korean coronal obstruents to see the behavior of the first formant bandwidth in those contexts.