Loudvoiced

Loudvoiced is a term that appears in some linguistic and phonetic discussions to describe a voice quality of voiced speech segments that exhibit higher-than-typical acoustic energy. The term blends the notions of voicing, which involves vocal fold vibration, with loudness, and it does not correspond to a widely standardized phonological category.

Definitions of loudvoiced vary. In some studies it refers to segments with stronger glottal excitation and higher subglottal pressure, producing a robust, high-amplitude periodic waveform and greater amplitude in the spectrogram. In other contexts it is an annotation or measurement outcome in acoustic analysis, where the energy of the voiced component exceeds a chosen threshold, without implying a separate phoneme.

Phonological status is unclear: loudvoiced is typically treated as a perceptual or instrumental descriptor rather than a phonemic contrast used to distinguish words or morphemes. Consequently, most languages do not have a dedicated loudvoiced phoneme; rather the concept is used within phonetic experiments, speech technology work, or prosodic studies to characterize the intensity of voicing.

Relationship to other voice qualities: loudvoiced is related to, but distinct from, modal voice, creaky voice, breathy voice, and harsh voice; it overlaps with high-intensity voicing. It is also different from mere “voiced” speech, as it emphasizes energy level rather than phonation type alone.

In practice, when encountered in literature, loudvoiced should be interpreted in the context of the data collection and analysis method, such as recording level, microphone sensitivity, and analysis thresholds.