Longman Dictionary of

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voice 3
in writing, the self-representation or positioning that a writer presents in
a text. Voice may be reflected in the writer’s way of representing the
world, in the writer’s relative tentativeness or authority in terms of his or
her relationship with the reader, and in the writer’s preferred way of turning
meaning into text.
see also AUDIENCE
voice onset time n
also VOT
when pronouncing STOPs, such as /p/, /b/ in pin, bin, the two articulators
(i.e. the lips) are closed and then opened again. With /b/ the VOCAL CORDs
are vibrating to produce a voiced stop (see VOICE 2 ). The voice onset time
is a relationship between these two factors. It is the point in time at which
the voicing starts in relation to the opening of the two articulators. For
example, the voice onset time for French, Spanish and Thai /b/ is generally
earlier than that for English /b/.
voice-over n
commentary spoken by an unseen narrator, for example in films, television
programmes, and commercials.
voice quality n
the overall impression that a listener obtains of a speaker’s voice. It is also
sometimes called timbre, and refers to those characteristics of a particular
voice that enable the listener to distinguish one voice from another,
such as when a person is able to identify a telephone caller. Voice quality
is known to be influenced by many factors, including, gender, age,
anatomy (e.g. height, weight, muscularity, geometry of the laryngeal
structures, respiratory volume), emotional states (e.g. fear, anger, sexual
arousal), and state of health (e.g. laryngitis, emphysema, Parkinson’s disease,
intoxication), as well as by the habitual adjustments made by individual
persons of the vocal tract (resulting, for example, in “harsh”,
“whispery”, or “creaky” voice), and also by the characteristic ARTICULA-
TORY SETTING associated with a specific language, dialect, or social variety
of a particular language.
voice synthesizer n
see SPEECH SYNTHESIS
VO language
VO language n
a language in which the verb usually precedes the object, in contrast to an
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