Harsh voice, also called ventricular voice or (in some high-tone registers) pressed voice, is the production of speech sounds (typically vowels) with a constricted laryngeal cavity, which generally involves epiglottal co-articulation. Harsh voice includes the use of the ventricular folds (the false vocal cords) to damp the glottis in a way similar to what happens when a person talks while lifting a heavy load, or, if the sound is voiceless, like clearing one's throat. It contrasts with faucalized voice, which involves the expansion of the larynx.
When the epiglottal co-articulation becomes a trill, the vowels are called strident.
There is no symbol for harsh voice in the IPA. Diacritics seen in the literature include the under-tilde used for creaky voice, the double under-tilde used as the ad hoc diacritic for strident vowels, which may be allophonic with harsh voice, and an ad hoc underline. In the Extensions to the IPA, the symbol is !, as in, but this is ambiguous with the release of alveolar click.
The Bai language has both harsh ("pressed") and strident vowels as part of its register system, but they are not contrastive.
The Bor dialect of Dinka has contrastive modal, breathy, faucalized, and harsh voice in its vowels, as well as three tones. The ad hoc diacritics employed in the literature are a subscript double quotation mark for faucalized voice, and underlining for harsh voice, . Examples are,
| phonation | IPA | translation |
|---|---|---|
| modal | tɕìt | diarrhea |
| breathy | tɕì̤t | go ahead |
| harsh | tɕì̱t | scorpions |
| faucalized | tɕì͈t | to swallow |
Famous quotes containing the words harsh and/or voice:
“Whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makes the whole world kin.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)