1 A phonetic study of the Sui consonants and tones Jerold A ...

epiglottis, the aryepiglottic folds, and the supraglottal laryngeal sphinctering mechanism.
For our research experiments we employed the Kay Elemetrics Rhino-Laryngeal
Stroboscope 9100 with a fixed halogen light source, an Olympus ENF-P3 flexible fiberoptic
laryngoscope, coupled to a Sony DCR-TRV17 Mini-DV Digital Camcorder for recording. A
narrow fiberoptic bundle was inserted through the nose and positioned over the glottis just above
the level of the apex of the epiglottis. James Wei then produced several tokens of the test
vocabulary set that was selected to illustrate preglottalized nasals and voiced stops. These were
recorded and later compared to laryngoscopic observation of plain nasals and (prenasalized)
voiced stops.
In order to better define structures for reference below, consider Figure 9 with James
Wei’s glottal structures in the breath position with arytenoids, vocal folds, ventricular folds, and
aryepiglottic folds clearly in abducted positions.
In Figure 10 below we present sequences of stills from the video recordings sometimes
separated by one or two frames (30 frames/sec recording speed).
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