Peak intraoral air pressures in whispered stop consonants

Abstract: Hypotheses based primarily on glottal resistance or increased air volume have been advanced by various investigators as an explanation for the differences in intraoral air pressure associated with the production of voiced/voiceless consonant pairs. For this study, whispered speech was employed to examine the nature of the air pressure differences in stop consonants. The results indicate that intraoral air pressure differences normally found for vocal voiced/ voiceless cognates were not found for the whisper speech samples. These results support a glottal resistance hypothesis.