Languages & Linguistics
Pharynx
The pharynx is a part of the throat located behind the oral cavity and nasal cavity. In the context of languages and linguistics, the pharynx plays a role in speech production, particularly in certain sounds and articulations. It is involved in the production of sounds such as pharyngeal consonants, which are made by constricting the pharynx.
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7 Key excerpts on "Pharynx"
- Alain Marchal(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Wiley-ISTE(Publisher)
Eustachian tube thyroid cartilage pharyngeal wall closing Stylopharyngeus Styloïd process Downwards Joins posterior Elevates and opens thyroid cartilage the Pharynx 88 From Speech Physiology to Linguistic Phonetics 3.2.3. The role of the Pharynx in speech If phoneticians have paid detailed attention to the anatomical and muscular description of the Pharynx, it is because alterations of the size and shape of the pharyngeal cavity play an important part in determining voice quality. For example, Takemoto et al. (2006) considered that the hypopharyngeal and ventricular cavities, with the piriform sinuses, are responsible for the fourth formant and have a role in determining speaker characteristics. Moreover, these cavities constitute the basis for phonological contrasts, defined in phonology (+/- expanded Pharynx) to specify certain phonemes. The expansion of the pharyngeal cavity can occur in several ways. The root of the tongue can, for example, move forwards. This movement, often suggestive of tension, is sometimes indicated by another feature, e.g. (+/- advanced tongue root). Variation in the volume of air in the Pharynx is also related to the elevation of the larynx, designated (+/- lowered larynx) by Chomsky and Halle (1968). Additionally, the volume can be varied by movement of the pharyngeal wall. These factors have all been related to tension, and some researchers see in them physiological correlates of the feature (+/- tense). Finally, nasality is made possible by the lowering of the velum. Having recalled the consequences of velar movements and the vertical movements of the larynx, we will offer a summary of the main studies focusing on movement in the tongue root and in the pharyngeal wall, and we will try to establish the varying opinions on the controversial question of the feature of tension.
eBook - PDF- Daniel E. Lieberman, Daniel E. Lieberman(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Belknap Press(Publisher)
8 Pharynx, Larynx, Tongue, and Lung His tongue was too large for his mouth, which ever made him speak full in the mouth, and made him drink very uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into his cup on each side of his mouth. ANTHONY WELDON , The Court and Character of King James I, 1650 I once had the pleasure of taking a seven-year-old traveling companion to the Museum of the Sewers of Paris (Le Musée des Égouts de Paris). It was a little malodorous, but it gave me a new appreciation of the importance of pipes. Pipes are as vital to cities as they are to bodies, and like most people, I usually take them for granted. In cities, pipes deliver water and power safely to thou-sands of buildings and then remove the waste. So it is with heads, in which flu-ids, solids, and gases must flow between the mouth and nose and either the gut or lungs through a series of pipelike spaces. Unless we have an obstruction, a sore throat, or an overly large tongue (like King James), we give these pipes little attention as we swallow, cough, breathe, sing, speak, smell, and gargle. This chapter considers the anatomy and growth of the Pharynx, nose, and oral cavity and their functional roles in swallowing, breathing, and vocalizing. The complex and still mysterious evolutionary history of the human Pharynx and its related spaces has left us with several major peculiarities. In most mammals, much of the Pharynx extends backward from the oral cavity at an obtuse angle in most postures, but this portion of the Pharynx is nearly per-pendicular to the oral cavity in humans. Second, the human Pharynx has a short, rounded tongue that positions many key structures, such as the hyoid and larynx, low relative to the oral cavity, creating a large shared space for food, water, and air. This configuration requires us to swallow a little differently from other mammals and makes us susceptible to choking, but it contributes to our unusual capabilities for producing articulate speech.
eBook - PDF- Ken Lodge(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
In the first case the normal position for voicelessness is used; in the second the cords are shut except for a small aperture near the ary-tenoid cartilages at the back of the larynx, through which air can escape, but without any vibration of the vocal cords. In either case all changes in pitch available to the speaker during voicing are excluded. 2.3 The Pharynx If we move up the vocal apparatus in the direction of egressive air, immediately above the larynx is the Pharynx. Part of it can be seen in a mirror looking through the opening at the back of the oral cavity (faucal opening) and is referred to by non-specialists as well as specialists as the throat. Typically, phoneticians do not use this more general term. The size of the Pharynx can be altered either by tightening the muscles surrounding it or by moving the tongue back into it, or both. Any such change in the size of the Pharynx causes a change in the quality of the sounds being produced. The root (radix) of the tongue can be moved from its position of rest either forwards slightly or backwards slightly. The former movement will expand the size of the Pharynx, the latter will reduce it. We will return to the effects of this when we consider the role of the tongue in section 2.6. Tightening the Pharynx is often a correlate of certain vowel articulation, but it can also be a general feature of individual speakers' speech. Mimics who caricature(d) John Major, the most recent Conservative Prime Minister of Great Britain, use pharyngeal tightening in an exaggerated way to replicate his voice quality. 22 A Critical Introduction to Phonetics When we come to consider places of articulation in section 2.8, we will find that the back wall of the Pharynx has a limited role to play as a passive articulator. 2.4 The epiglottis The epiglottis is a small upward-pointing flap at the extreme base of the tongue (see Figure 2.9).
eBook - PDF- Bruce Hayes, Bruce P. Hayes(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
In principle, a phonologist should understand all three of the areas of phonetics listed above: production, acoustics, and perception. Of these, production prob- ably has the greatest practical importance for the study of phonology. Since it is also the simplest to describe, it is what will be covered here. 2 Phonetics 1.2 The Vocal Tract The term “vocal tract” designates all the portions of the human anatomy through which air flows in the course of speech production (see figure 1.1). These include (from bottom to top): • The lungs and lower respiratory passages • The larynx (colloquially: “voice box”). This is the primary (but not the only) source of sound in speech production • The passages above the larynx, called the Pharynx, oral cavity (mouth), and nasal cavity The lungs and respiratory muscles produce a fairly steady level of air pressure, which powers the creation of sound. There are occasional momentary peaks of pressure for certain speech sounds and for emphatically stressed syllables. Air from the lungs ascends through the bronchial tubes, which join to form the trachea (windpipe). The bronchial tubes and the trachea form an inverted Y-shape. 1.2.1 The larynx The larynx is a complex structure of cartilage and muscle, located in the neck and partly visible in adult males (whose larynxes are the largest) as the “Adam’s apple.” Figure 1.2 shows two diagrams of the larynx: nasal cavity oral cavity Pharynx esophagus trachea bronchial tubes larynx lungs Figure 1.1 The vocal tract Phonetics 3 The larynx contains the vocal cords (not “chords”), which are parallel flaps of tissue extending from each side of the interior larynx wall. The vocal cords have a slit between them, called the glottis. The vocal cords are held at their rear ends by two small cartilages called the arytenoid cartilages. Since these cartilages are mobile, they can be used to adjust the distance between the vocal cords.
eBook - PDF- Alan Cruttenden(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The shape and volume of this long chamber may be considerably modified by the constrictive action of the muscles enclosing the Pharynx, by the movement of the back of the tongue, by the position of the soft palate which may, when raised, exclude the nasoPharynx, and by the raising ofthe larynx itself. The position ofthe tongue in the mouth, whether it is advanced or retracted, will affect the size of the oropharyngeal cavity; the modifications in shape ofthis cavity should, therefore, be included in the description of any vowel. It is a characteristic of some kinds of English pronunciation that certain vowels, e.g. the [al vowel in sad, are The production of speech 13 articulated with a strong pharyngeal contraction. Additionally, a constriction may be made between the lower rear part of the tongue and the wall of the Pharynx so that friction, with or without voice, is produced, such fricative sounds being a feature of a number of languages, e.g. Arabic.? The Pharynx may be observed by means of a laryngoscope or fibre-optic nasendoscopy and its constrictive actions are revealed by MRI. (See video 4.14-21) The escape of air from the Pharynx may be effected in one of three ways: (I) The soft palate may be lowered, as in normal breathing, in which case the air may escape through the nose and the mouth. This is the position taken up by the soft palate in articulation of the French NASALISED vowels in such a phrase as un bon vin blanc [& bö VE bld], the particular quality of such vowels being achieved through the resonance of the nasopharyngeal cavities.
eBook - PDFIntroducing Linguistics
Theoretical and Applied Approaches
- Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, John W. Schwieter(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Speech sounds are generated when air is pushed through the vocal tract. The vocal tract is the area from the nose and the nasal cavity down to the vocal 2 Phonetics Christine Shea and Sarah Ollivia O’Neill 26 Phonetics cords deep in the throat. As the air passes through the vocal tract, it moves through the larynx, the Pharynx, the oral cavity, and the nasal cavity. 2.2.1 Articulators In spite of the diverse number of sounds that exist in the world’s languages, humans use a small set of articulators, or speech organs (e.g., jaw, tongue, teeth, lips, hard palate) to produce all human speech sounds. The articulators are all located in the upper por- tion of the speech production system, above the larynx. Figure 2.1 shows the parts of the speech production system. Larynx Nasal cavity Palate Pharynx Velum Oral cavity Tongue Epiglottis Trachea Lungs Lungs Supralaryngeal vocal tract Subglottal Figure 2.1 Speech production system 27 2.2 Speech Production There are two types of articulators: • Active articulators: move during the production of a speech sound to form a closure of some type in the vocal tract. For example, when we articulate the first sound in the word tea, our tongue moves to the roof of our mouth, just behind our teeth. The tongue, in this case, is the active articulator because it moves towards the roof of our mouth, which does not move and is the passive articulator. • Passive articulators: do not (typically) move and are often the point of contact for an active articulator. For example, when English speakers produce the sound ‘g’, the back of the tongue is the active articulator and the velum (see Figure 2.1) is the passive articulator. When we name sounds, we typically refer to the passive articulator. In Table 2.1 you can see some examples of speech sounds produced by different com- binations of passive and active articulators.
eBook - PDFThe Sounds of Language
An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology
- Elizabeth C. Zsiga(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
Can you feel the thyroid cartilage move up in your throat as pitch rises? Such speaker-controlled changes in pitch can be very important to the linguistic message. Thus, the linguistic function of the larynx is (mainly) to control pitch and voice. Its biological, non-speech, function is to serve as a valve that separates the lungs and the stomach. Other animals that use their mouths to both breathe and eat have valves that serve THE VOCAL TRACT 9 the same non-speech function as the human larynx, but no other animal has such fine-tuned laryngeal control. The human larynx is also nearly unique in being placed so low in the throat. In adult humans, the trachea (the passage to the lungs) and esophagus (the passage to the stomach) do not split off until halfway down the throat. In addition, the trachea is in front of the esophagus, so that food and water must pass over the top of the trachea in order to get to the stomach – a surprisingly dangerous arrangement. (Your mother was right – don’t try to talk and eat at the same time.) In other primates and almost all other mammals the trachea extends much higher, up through the back of the mouth so that the trachea can connect directly to the nasal passages. Thus a deer can drink and breathe at the same time: the air going through the nose and down the trachea, with water going around the sides of the trachea rather than over the top. Humans cannot. In order to be able to eat at all without getting food into the lungs, the human must close off the trachea by tightly closing the larynx when food or drink is being swallowed. The closure is aided by the epiglottis, a flap of tissue attached to the base of the tongue, which folds down over the top of the larynx, which rises to meet it, during swallowing. Try swal- lowing a few times, paying attention to the muscular sensations.
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