Vocal Fry: A sonic feature of a diverse city #Acoustics23

Community diversity is among many factors, including gender and ethnicity, that determine the use of creaky voice in speech in Sydney, Australia

2023-12-08

(Press-News.org) SYDNEY, Dec. 8, 2023 – Vocal fry has a bad reputation in American English. A subtype of creaky voice, a feature of speech that sounds gravelly and pulselike, this manner of speech is sometimes used to form judgment about the speaker. In many languages, the creaky tone changes the meaning of words, exhibited in Lango spoken in South Sudan or Jalapa Mazatec spoken in Mexico.

Hannah White and her Department of Linguistics colleagues at Macquarie University researched how creaky voice is reflected in Australian English used in Sydney, and what factors influence its prevalence. She will present her findings on the complex relationship between creaky voice and gender, ethnicity, and the diversity of where the speaker lives Dec. 8 at 9:40 a.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Time, as part of Acoustics 2023, running Dec. 4-8 at the International Convention Centre Sydney.

“Creaky voice has been researched a lot in American English, but very little has been done here, in Australia,” said White. “We wanted to investigate if the common belief that creaky voice is a feature of women’s speech is true for Australian English. Studies in New Zealand and London have found that creaky voice use is influenced by speaker ethnic heritage, and with Sydney being as multicultural as it is, we wanted to investigate that here.”

White’s team used conversation samples from high school students across Sydney and employed algorithms to automatically identify creaky voice. The data used was part of a larger Australian Research Council-funded project called “Multicultural Australian English: The new voice of Sydney,” led by Professor Felicity Cox.

Their results reveal that the area a speaker lives, and its diversity, are some of the most significant factors determining creaky voice use. They could not generalize about the influence of gender on creaky voice in Australian English in Sydney.

“There was no statistically significant difference in creak prevalence by gender in the area with a high proportion of monolingual English speakers,” said White. “In some of the other areas, men used less creak than women, and, in other areas, women used less creak than men.”

In future work, White seeks to approach the topic from the listener’s angle, investigating attitudes toward creaky voice and the coded social meaning.

###

----------------------- MORE MEETING INFORMATION -----------------------

The Acoustical Society of America is joining the Australian Acoustical Society to co-host Acoustics 2023 in Sydney. This collaborative event will incorporate the Western Pacific Acoustics Conference and the Pacific Rim Underwater Acoustics Conference.

Main meeting website: https://acoustics23sydney.org/
Technical program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/src/EventPilot/php/express/web/planner.php?id=ASAFALL23

ASA PRESS ROOM

In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS

ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION

ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting or virtual press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

ABOUT THE AUSTRALIAN ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY

The Australian Acoustical Society (AAS) is the peak technical society for individuals working in acoustics in Australia. The AAS aims to promote and advance the science and practice of acoustics in all its branches to the wider community and provide support to acousticians. Its diverse membership is made up from academia, consultancies, industry, equipment manufacturers and retailers, and all levels of Government. The Society supports research and provides regular forums for those who practice or study acoustics across a wide range of fields The principal activities of the Society are technical meetings held by each State Division, annual conferences which are held by the State Divisions and the ASNZ in rotation, and publication of the journal Acoustics Australia. https://www.acoustics.org.au/

###

END

[Attachments] See images for this press release:

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Automated system teaches users when to collaborate with an AI assistant

2023-12-07

Artificial intelligence models that pick out patterns in images can often do so better than human eyes — but not always. If a radiologist is using an AI model to help her determine whether a patient’s X-rays show signs of pneumonia, when should she trust the model’s advice and when should she ignore it? A customized onboarding process could help this radiologist answer that question, according to researchers at MIT and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. They designed a system that teaches a user when to collaborate with an AI assistant. In ...

CCNY team develops pioneering indoor navigation system

2023-12-07

In a major stride toward revolutionizing indoor navigation, a City College of New York-led team has developed groundbreaking technology that could chart real-time paths, delivering users—both sighted and low vision—a seamless and accurate indoor navigation experience complete with turn-by-turn guidance. The invention has earned a U.S. patent titled "System and Method for Real-time Indoor Navigation." The innovation is the brainchild of the City College-based CUNY Computational Vision and Convergence Laboratory (CCVCL) headed by Zhigang ...

SLAC brings rapid-fire laser and target expertise to national fusion energy research hubs

2023-12-07

The U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University will partner with Colorado State University (CSU), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and other institutions in the creation of two inertial fusion science and technology hubs that were announced today by the DOE. Following on last year’s fusion ignition breakthrough at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility, the hubs aim to accelerate foundational inertial fusion research and technology development toward a potential clean and abundant energy source. In total, $42 million was awarded to collaborations between universities, ...

Cooling down the hot takes on Twitch

2023-12-07

Twitch. Some see it as a fun online community of gamers and good-natured e-sports fandom. For others, it’s a perilous stream of potentially toxic content and hate speech. In the ever-evolving landscape of digital communication, the real-time nature of messages on live-stream platforms like Twitch and YouTube Live brings with it unique challenges for content moderation. At present, effective tools for moderating content in live streams are lacking because existing models have been trained on non-real-time social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. Research Assistant Dong-Ho Lee and Principal Scientist Jay Pujara, ...

Study: How farmers decide to store or sell their grain

2023-12-07

URBANA, Ill. – When farmers harvest their grain, they can choose to sell it right away or store it to obtain better prices later in the season. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign explores how Illinois corn and soybean producers make those decisions and why the cost-benefit evaluation of storage may differ across farms. Agricultural commodity prices fluctuate in response to changes in supply and demand, which depends on the stockpile of grain inventories around the country — but economists don’t really don't know how farmers decide to sell versus store their grain. “Economic theory provides guidance that Extension ...

Black patients less likely to get referral for home health care after hospital stay

2023-12-07

When discharging Black patients from the hospital, nurses are less likely to refer them to home health care than white patients, a new University of Michigan study found. About 22% of Black patients are referred by discharge nurses to home health care compared to 27% of white patients. The study found that despite a higher likelihood that Black patients were unmarried, lived alone and had more chronic conditions—all risk factors for hospital readmission—they were routinely rated equally ready for hospital discharge as white patients, and ...

Damon Runyon launches post-baccalaureate research internship

2023-12-07

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation is thrilled to announce the launch of the Damon Runyon Scholars Program for Advancing Research and Knowledge (SPARK), a one-year intensive cancer research internship program for post-baccalaureate students who come from backgrounds underrepresented in the sciences. The goal of the program is to provide students who have the potential to become leaders in cancer research with rigorous scientific training and a network of mentors and peers to support their next steps into graduate school and beyond. Damon ...

The Morton Arboretum tree root scientist recognized as top-cited researcher

2023-12-07

LISLE, Ill. (Dec. 7, 2023)— The Morton Arboretum Tree Root Biologist Luke McCormack, Ph.D., has been recognized as one of the most cited and influential researchers worldwide by global information services provider Clarivate’s esteemed 2023 list of “Highly Cited Researchers.” The list includes influential researchers at universities, research institutes and commercial organizations around the world who have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their field(s) of research. McCormack is the first Arboretum ...

Discrimination during pregnancy may alter circuits in infants’ brains

2023-12-07

Racial discrimination and bias are painful realities and increasingly recognized as detrimental to the health of adults and children. These stressful experiences also appear to be transmitted from mother to child during pregnancy, altering the strength of infants’ brain circuits, according to a new study from researchers at Columbia, Yale, and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. The study found similar brain changes in infants whose mothers experienced stress from adapting to a new culture during pregnancy. “A leading hypothesis would be that the connectivity changes that we see could ...

Wayne State University announces creation of two research centers and institutes that aim to impact the health of Detroiters and beyond

2023-12-07

DETROIT – Wayne State University Interim Vice President for Research Timothy Stemmler, Ph.D., announced today the university’s Board of Governors approved the creation of two research initiatives that aim to improve the health and lives of the Detroit community and beyond. Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases The Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases (CEID) will contribute to the ongoing advancement of diagnostic testing, enabling rapid and accurate identification of infectious ...