Resonance Characteristics of Hypopharyngeal Cavities

Hypopharyngeal cavities consisting of the laryngeal cavity and bilateral piriform fossa are located near the bottom of the vocal tract and influence vocal tract resonance in the higher frequencies. An MRI-based analysis on a male speaker revealed that the laryngeal cavity functions as a Helmholtz resonator to add a spectral peak at 3~3.5 kHz and that the piriform fossa causes troughs at 4~5 kHz. Based on the result, we propose an acoustic model of vowel production with hypopharyngeal cavity coupling and examine vowel-to-vowel variation of the hypopharyngeal resonance. 1