Glottis
The space between the
vocal cords is called the
glottis. As the vocal cords vibrate, the resulting vibration produces a "buzzing" quality to the speech, called
voice or
voicing.
Sounds production involving only the glottis is called
glottal. English has a
voiceless glottal fricative spelled "h". In many accents of English the
glottal stop (made by pressing the folds together) is used as a variant
allophone of the phoneme (and in some dialects, occasionally of and ); in some languages, this sound is a
phoneme of its own.
Skilled players of the Australian
didgeridoo restrict their glottal opening in order to produce the full range of timbres available on the instrument. (See "Acoustics: The vocal tract and the sound of a didgeridoo", by Tarnopolsky et al. in Nature 436, 39 (
7 July 2005)).
The vibration produced is an essential component of
voiced consonants as well as
vowels. If the vocal folds are drawn apart, air flows between them causing no vibration, as in the production of voiceless consonants.
*Voiced consonants include
*Voiceless consonants include
Phonation
