o (Morton, 1977) as well as formant dispersion (Fitch, 1997). fo is the frequency at which membranes (the vocal folds in the case of humans) vibrate (see Lee and Mok, 2021 for a recent review), and is determined by body size – “(t)he larger the animal, the lower the sound frequency it can produce” (Morton, 1977, p. 864). Formant dispersion, or the averaged difference between successive formant frequencies, reflects one’s vocal tract length (Fitch, 1997), and in turn body size. The shorter the vocal tract, the further apart the speaker’s formants. As for fo range, the use of a larger fo range is associated with both cooperativeness (cf. “the effort code,” Gussenhoven, 2016) and happiness (Xu et al., 2013), in turn likely a smaller body which signals less threat. In terms of voice quality, breathy voice (acoustically manifested in spectral parameters such as “H1–A1” and “H1–A3”) is argued to be acoustically more similar to pure tone compared with voice qualities such as modal voice (Xu et al., 2013), and signals a small body according to Morton (1977). Conversely, creaky voice (main acoustic correlates: “jitter” and “shimmer”) is typically argued to be associated with masculinity and authority (see Yuasa, 2010 for a review).
Cross-Linguistic Variation in Needs when you look at the Sounds
The acoustic correlates of an attractive voice have been extensively studied in recent years. To male English listeners, an attractive female voice is high in fo, breathy, and with wide formant dispersion, all of which signal a small body; to female English listeners, an attractive male voice (i) is low in fo and (ii) has narrow formant dispersion, both signaling a large body, but (iii) is also breathy, signaling a smaller body (Xu et al., 2013), presumably to neutralize some of the hostility accompanying the large projected body. Continue reading …