ABSTRACT
The main focus of phonetics, throughout its history, has been upon segmental features of speech. Although this focus is understandable, given that a primary motivation for development of phonetics as an academic discipline was a wish to understand the way in which linguistic units are realised, it still seems somewhat surprising that voice quality has not received more attention. Voice quality was described by Abercrombie (1967) as “… those characteristics which are present more or less all the time that a person is talking … a quasi-permanent quality running through all the sound that issues from his mouth.”, (p.91), and I will apply this definition in its broadest sense, taking the view that the whole of the speech production apparatus may contribute to voice quality. This is an important divergence from narrower definitions that equate voice with phonation, but is probably quite consistent with the usual lay-person’s usage of the word “voice”. The importance of voice quality in human interaction is hard to overstate, and is apparent in almost any description, academic or otherwise, of social interaction and communication. Its salience is evident in the huge range of descriptive terms for voice which can be found in accounts of interactions and personal characteristics, be they factual or fictional, and oral or written (Laver, 1991).
