Have you ever wondered what is going on in the depths of the throat? Voice Quality: The Laryngeal Articulator Model, released in the UK in June 2019 and elsewhere in August/September 2019, is the first comprehensive phonetic description of voice quality in 40 years. Based on detailed instrumental observations of the larynx, the book changes our understanding of the role and function of the larynx in speech, singing, first language acquisition, voice pathology, and in the evolution of language.

As an introduction to the book, visit the book’s free companion website (see http://www.cambridge.org/voicequalityresources, and click on Resources, then Resources under General Resources). There you can access videos, sound recordings, and text files that illustrate the different states of the larynx across languages of the world, in infant speech, and in voice disorders. These resources, based on nearly 25 years of data collection, have been brought together in one place for the first time, and can be shared with colleagues, students, and interested members of the general public for use in teaching and research.

The book breaks new ground in highlighting the role of the larynx as a separate articulator, which departs from the tradition of viewing the larynx as only the source of ‘vocal fold vibrations’. This new understanding of the larynx illuminates the mechanisms and processes involved in infant speech acquisition and in the effective rehabilitation of voice disorders. The Laryngeal Articulator Model also makes room for innovative phonetic and phonological theories that more clearly account for the role of the larynx in sound change and in the evolution of spoken language in our species.

This is your opportunity to view high-quality laryngoscopic videos of the lower vocal tract in Arabic, west coast languages of Canada, west and northeast African languages, Danish, Tibeto-Burman languages, and Tibetan chanting, accompanied by new and highly accurate drawings of the ‘two-part’ vocal tract. Drawings illustrate what is no less than a remapping of the adult and infant vocal tracts as well as disruptions to the vocal tract that occur as the result of voice/speech disorders or surgery. Laryngoscopic videos provide extensive examples of all types of lower-vocal-tract disorders and how the laryngeal mechanism compensates for loss of functionality. Over 100 audio recordings of infants in their first year of life illustrate how we humans make use of the laryngeal mechanism to form our first speech. These data are unavailable elsewhere or with the same focus on articulatory posture. The book also contains new diagrams of computational simulations of voice production, with videos to show the output of the models. X-ray, ultrasound, and MRI videos complete the picture of how the laryngeal vocal tract coordinates with the oral vocal tract in forming articulatory settings and vowel quality.

Some of the speech production described in the book relates to short-term articulations, whereas voice quality is usually taken to be a long-term sustained posture. Articulatory configurations of shorter duration can be easily visualized in the accompanying videos and extrapolated to long-term voice quality settings. Interesting concepts introduced in the book are the ‘axis of [e/o]’ and that ‘infant speech begins in the pharynx’. Long-term habitual voice qualities in speech are illustrated with over 150 citations of popular personalities, actors, voice artists, singers, announcers, and public and media figures. A PDF of the Multimedia references list is included among the companion files for the reader to cut and paste as search terms to locate online videos that exemplify each voice quality setting.

Chapter 1 for further reading on Cambridge Core