Gussenhoven introduces a basic, foundational model of speech production, and Kenstowicz explores different models that account for the deeper complexities of speech production.
The section that got me thinking the most—although a pretty short section—was the one on pitch from the Gussenhoven reading. After reading that variations in pitch boil down to how quickly or slowly our vocal folds open and close, I couldn’t help but wonder how something seemingly so mechanical became so crucial to our ability to express and understand meaning.
It struck me as funny how, to a certain degree, many people’s talents and successes rely pretty heavily on their control of how fast or slow their vocal folds open and close when they talk or sing. You hear people talk about singers having perfect pitch as some innate gift; is it really just that some of us are born with a better set of vocal folds that make it possible to produce sounds of a certain pitch? I am sure there is more to this phenomenon that involves other processes (e.g. hearing), but it is pretty crazy to think about how much meaning and value we attach to something apparently as arbitrary as the speed with which we open and close our vocal folds when we talk and sing.
When reading about pitch, I thought about radio voices, and the trend for radio announcers to have deep voices—voices of low pitch. I started wondering why this trend exists. Is there something inherently more pleasant or appealing about listening to lower-pitch over higher-pitch voices? As it turns out, according to an article on the topic, the trend took off in the 1960s with the rise of FM broadcasting. FM broadcasting introduced better audio clarity and gave broadcasters a wider range of discernible pitch with which to work. This trend did not exist in AM broadcasting, so it gave FM broadcasters a way to distinguish themselves. They used their ability to speak in a very low pitch as a means of conveying a certain sense of identity. And so began a tradition that continues today as radio broadcasters continue to imitate this low-pitch style of broadcasting. This brief historical account of radio broadcasting does not address the question I posed about preferring lower pitches over higher pitches, but it does shed light on an interesting way people use pitch for the sake of style and discernibility.
Given that we use pitch in the ways described above and also to perform gender (among many other things), I am curious to know to what extent the meaning we ascribe to variation in pitch is innate. In other words, does pitch have inherent meaning or does all of the meaning we infer from it come from the culture and environment in which we are raised?
That's an interesting observation, about the change to broadcasts brought about by FM radio. The animal kingdom seems to work analogously-- whales can hear subsonic frequencies down to 7Hz, and use this to communicate over incredible distances; bats can hear supersonic frequencies up to 100kHz and use this to echolocate (figures: Wikipedia).
ReplyDeleteAnyways, one other fascinating thing about pitch is that most of us have an incredibly keen ability to perceive whole number ratios between tone frequencies-- hearing a 440Hz tone with an 880Hz tone would sound fine, and a 440Hz tone with an 875Hz tone would sound maybe a little off, and a 440Hz tone with an 860Hz tone would sound terribly dissonant (I just tried it on my laptop: it is indeed the case). I wonder whether harmonicity is a feature we perceive in everyday speech-- common descriptors of voices like 'sing-songy' or 'musical' indicate to me that it might be. If so, perhaps vocal harmonicity is another way in which gender is performed, i.e., that men would try to sound more dissonant and women more consonant.
Also, Perhaps our keen harmonic sense is used to give us an idea of the ratio between vocal formants (i.e. something like 'below 4:5, but above 2:3'), and our preference for nearly exact harmonics is simply a consequence of this.