Producing a Singer’s Formant at High Front Vowels - Some Kinematical and Anatomical Aspects

Abstract

The so-called singer’s formant is a merge between at least two formants, possibly F3 and F4. We reconstructed some functional-anatomical phenomena in pronouncing the vowel /i/, by means of a crossed four-bar-linkage model simulating jaw motion in a sagittal plane. During uttering the high front vowel /i/ in “Heed”, the tongue’s dorsum is lifted, so as to narrow the linguo-palatal port, while the velo-pharyngeal port simultaneously closes. Although Sundberg et al. (2007) presume individual preference in the amount of this velo-pharyngeal closing during the production of a singer’s formant, we rather interpret this as a tautening of the palatine aponeurosis by bilateral activity of the tensor veli palatini muscle, neuromotorically associated with a slight elevation of the mandible by bilateral activity of a.o. the medial pterygoid muscle.