States of the glottis

Besides the two configurations (voiced and voiceless) we mentioned for the sounds of English, some languages use sounds that involve two additional states of the glottis. These are creaky voice (also known as ‘laryngealized’ or ‘vocal fry’) and murmur (also called ‘breathy voice’).

In creaky voice the arytenoid cartilages at the back of the glottis are together, and the cords vibrate at the other end. The result is a low-pitched sound. Many Chadic languages (e.g. Hausa, Bura, and Margi of West Africa) use such sounds to make changes in meaning in opposition to a regularly voiced sound. Creaks can be transcribed by adding a subscript tilde to individual sounds (e.g. [a̰]).

Murmurs (or breathy voiced sounds) are produced in such a way that the vocal cords are apart at the back, while they vibrate at the front portion. The opening of the cords is narrower than in voiceless sounds, and the cords vibrate with high volume-velocity airflow through this gap, which subsides soon because the high rate of flow cannot be maintained for long. Murmur sounds can be transcribed by placing two dots [..] under individual sounds (e.g. [d̤]). Niger-Congo languages in Africa (e.g. Zulu, Shona) and several languages spoken in India (e.g. Hindi, Sindhi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati) have murmured stops. Also, in Mazatec (an Oto-Mangean language spoken in Mexico) laryngealized vowels, breathy voiced vowels, and regular vowels can be found in contrast (i.e. substitutions for each other making differences in meaning).