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:
“Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)