Description
It is well-known that transgender men experience voice change resulting from hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Most notably, their pitch drops to the level of cisgender men (Zimman, 2017). But there are other gendered differences in pronunciation, and to what extent these are influenced by HRT is not always clear. One such difference is the size of the vowel space, indicated by the formant frequencies of vowels. Women’s formant frequencies are roughly 15% higher than those of men (Hillenbrand & Clark, 2009). Also after normalisation, women have a larger vowel space than men, the difference being predominantly in the height dimension (Henton, 1995). It is believed that the higher formant frequencies allow women to make better use of the more widely spaced harmonic frequencies of their fundamental frequency (pitch). Formant frequencies contribute to speaker gender recognition, including in transgender — in this case transfemale — speakers (Menezes et al., 2019). While there is a clear physiological cause for the pitch drop in transgender men during HRT, there is less evidence that a similarly automatic change will happen in formant frequencies. Vowel height (F1) and frontness (F2) are related to vocal tract shape and size, which remain stable with the administration of testosterone. However, a lower pitch does allow transgender men to reduce the size of their vowel space. In this paper, we present results of a longitudinal study into voice change in two transgender men during the first two years of HRT (cf. Knooihuizen & Reuvers, 2019). We analyse change in vowel formant frequencies in both Dutch and English using different measures: raw values, formant dispersion (Df), and formant position (Pf) (Puts et al., 2012). By comparing the different measures in both languages, we aim to understand better how formant frequencies may contribute to expressing an authentic (trans)masculine voice.| Period | 19-May-2019 |
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| Event title | Sociolinguistic Circle 2021 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Antwerpen, BelgiumShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |