Changes in Subglottal Air Pressure Associated with Changes of Fundamental Frequency
Robert E. McGlone, Thomas Shipp · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1970
Subglottal air pressure was recorded with the aid of an intratracheal catheter as three young adult males produced an upward and downward glissando. From a graphic display of both the pressure and the phonation, changes in pressure (ΔPs) and fundamental frequency (Δfo) were determined. The mean Δfo/ΔPs ratio for both phonatory activities was 7.67 semitones per centimeter of water. This is considerably larger than reported by previous investigators. Moreover, when only the range of fundamentals most often used for speech was considered an even larger ratio was found. Even though the importance of subglottal pressure to the generation of a laryngeal tone cannot be denied, the present data suggest that changes in the fundamental of that tone are probably more directly related to laryngeal adjustments such as changes in mass and length of the vocal folds.