If you look into Wikipedia in the hope of learning about voicing and voice quality, you will find a rather confusing picture. There is a rather long and badly designed article on Phonation and this touches on most topics that one would expect to see in the description of the mechanism of vocal fold vibration. However, this article also has a paragraph on glottal consonants such as [h] and the glottal stop; this inclusion is apparently based on the unreferenced claim that “Some phoneticians have described these sounds as neither glottal nor consonantal, but instead as instances of pure phonation, at least in many European languages”. I can’t think of any reputable phonetician who would write of “pure phonation”, nor why the description should be restricted to European languages.
The article goes on to outline what it calls “Supraglottal phonation”. This is badly muddled: the list includes the terms ‘glottal’ and ‘ventricular’, which are mechanisms for producing vibration (voicing), ‘arytenoid’ (which is described as “sphincteric compression forwards and upwards”, something that makes no sense to me) and three articulations labelled ‘epiglotto-pharyngeal’, ‘raising or lowering of the entire larynx’ and ‘narrowing of the pharynx’, all of which seem to me to be modifications of phonation produced elsewhere in the larynx. There are a few useful examples of modal, breathy, faucalized, and harsh voice in Dinka. But overall, the treatment is far less transparent and comprehensive than the treatment devised by John Laver (see The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality, C.U.P., 1980).
By this stage in the article we have reached some rather esoteric material concerned with different voice qualities found in various languages. Rather abruptly we are then taken to a section on “European language examples” which is just a very simple treatment of contrastive voicing in a few languages and belongs much higher up in the article. The topic of linguistically contrastive voicing is covered by a completely different article on Voice (phonetics). The European languages section is followed by a little three-sentence section on “Phonology” and a very woolly section on ‘Pedagogy and speech pathology’; I suspect that ‘pedagogy’ here means something very different from ‘pronunciation teaching’ – there is a link to a different article on Vocal register which is very much better organised than the ‘Phonation’ article. The writer of the bit on speech pathology is clearly not aware of the vocal profiling work of Laver and co-workers.
My other major criticism concerns the sections on theories of the production of voicing, labelled ‘Myoelastic and aerodynamic theory’ and ‘Neurochronaxic theory’. Firstly, the neurochronaxic theory had been comprehensively demolished by the end of the 1950’s; it is astonishing that so many books and papers still drag out this decayed corpse for another kicking. It is as if geography textbooks routinely included a chapter on flat-earth theory, or astronomers felt the need to point out that the earth is not the centre of the universe. This should be removed from the article, and I have already told WP that I plan to do this unless there is an objection. The writer of this bit seems to think that there are two other theories, one myoelastic and the other aerodynamic, but suggests that the two might be in some way combined. As far as I know, the present-day account of how the vocal folds come to vibrate has always been known as the myoelastic-aerodynamic theory of phonation. You couldn’t just have one as a comprehensive theory of phonation. (Please correct me if I am wrong on this).
As a final headache, the topic of supralaryngeal effects on voice quality overlaps on to the topic of Articulatory settings, which I have mentioned several times recently. Some cross-referencing is clearly needed here, but I'm not sure if a separate article on Voice quality is needed if the Phonation article can be suitably reworked.
The article goes on to outline what it calls “Supraglottal phonation”. This is badly muddled: the list includes the terms ‘glottal’ and ‘ventricular’, which are mechanisms for producing vibration (voicing), ‘arytenoid’ (which is described as “sphincteric compression forwards and upwards”, something that makes no sense to me) and three articulations labelled ‘epiglotto-pharyngeal’, ‘raising or lowering of the entire larynx’ and ‘narrowing of the pharynx’, all of which seem to me to be modifications of phonation produced elsewhere in the larynx. There are a few useful examples of modal, breathy, faucalized, and harsh voice in Dinka. But overall, the treatment is far less transparent and comprehensive than the treatment devised by John Laver (see The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality, C.U.P., 1980).
By this stage in the article we have reached some rather esoteric material concerned with different voice qualities found in various languages. Rather abruptly we are then taken to a section on “European language examples” which is just a very simple treatment of contrastive voicing in a few languages and belongs much higher up in the article. The topic of linguistically contrastive voicing is covered by a completely different article on Voice (phonetics). The European languages section is followed by a little three-sentence section on “Phonology” and a very woolly section on ‘Pedagogy and speech pathology’; I suspect that ‘pedagogy’ here means something very different from ‘pronunciation teaching’ – there is a link to a different article on Vocal register which is very much better organised than the ‘Phonation’ article. The writer of the bit on speech pathology is clearly not aware of the vocal profiling work of Laver and co-workers.
My other major criticism concerns the sections on theories of the production of voicing, labelled ‘Myoelastic and aerodynamic theory’ and ‘Neurochronaxic theory’. Firstly, the neurochronaxic theory had been comprehensively demolished by the end of the 1950’s; it is astonishing that so many books and papers still drag out this decayed corpse for another kicking. It is as if geography textbooks routinely included a chapter on flat-earth theory, or astronomers felt the need to point out that the earth is not the centre of the universe. This should be removed from the article, and I have already told WP that I plan to do this unless there is an objection. The writer of this bit seems to think that there are two other theories, one myoelastic and the other aerodynamic, but suggests that the two might be in some way combined. As far as I know, the present-day account of how the vocal folds come to vibrate has always been known as the myoelastic-aerodynamic theory of phonation. You couldn’t just have one as a comprehensive theory of phonation. (Please correct me if I am wrong on this).
As a final headache, the topic of supralaryngeal effects on voice quality overlaps on to the topic of Articulatory settings, which I have mentioned several times recently. Some cross-referencing is clearly needed here, but I'm not sure if a separate article on Voice quality is needed if the Phonation article can be suitably reworked.
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