Semantic predictability and the use of creaky voice in female speakers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of creaky voice in sentence-final position as a function of semantic predictability of the final word. Creaky voice is maligned in the media and often claimed to be less intelligible than normal phonation. A recent study finds some evidence to support this claim by examining intelligibility of single words. If speakers were concerned about intelligibility of their speech, they may be less likely to use it in sentences with little semantic support (e.g., “Mr. Black knew about the pad” compared to “Tear off some paper from the pad”). In the current study, 11 young female speakers without any vocal pathologies produced sentences from the Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) test. Fourteen final words that appeared in both high and low semantic predictability sentences were selected for analysis. Three outcome measures were examined for these final words: presence versus absence of creaky voice, duration of creaky voice, and type of creaky voice. Contrary to our expectations, the results indicated that semantic support does not significantly predict the existence, amount, or type of creaky voice in young female speakers.