Creaky voice in South Swedish accent 1

Pitch and voice quality are increasingly understood as closelyintertwined. While Swedish and Norwegian word accents have traditionally been understood in terms of pitch, Danish stød, which is systematically related when it comes to distribution and function, has been described as a type of creaky voice. According to the Laryngeal Articulator Model (LAM), both pitch lowering and creaky or harsh voice can be the acoustic outcomes of tightening the laryngeal constrictor mechanism. Laryngeal constriction has been proposed as the articulatory gesture behind word accents and stød. The present study investigated creaky voice in South Swedish word accents. Harmonics-to-noise ratio was significantly lower and jitter significantly higher in accent 1 compared to accent 2 stressed vowels. Further, jitter and shimmer was higher and spectral tilt was lower in sonorant consonants following stressed vowels. The results suggest that prototypical creaky voice is another cue to accent 1 in South Swedish and is in line with proposals that pitch falls in word accents correspond to laryngeal constriction.