About

Professor Marc Garellek is a member of the Department of Linguistics at UC San Diego. The department emphasizes research and instruction across a variety of theoretical and experimental frameworks, with a focus on diverse languages and their empirical testing of theoretical claims. Faculty, including Professor Garellek, engage in research encompassing phonetics, signed languages, psycholinguistics, event-related brain potentials (ERPs), and computational modeling. The department's approach reflects a commitment to accurate, cognitively realistic analyses of language structure informed by linguistic theories, contributing to a synthesis of diverse perspectives in the field.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Speech recognition
• Acoustics
• Linguistics
• Mathematics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Physics
• Pure mathematics

Selected publications

• Phonation Type

  2026-05-11

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Phonation types have been central to major topics in phonological theory, from questions about the internal structure of segments, to what should count as a segment in the first place, and to the role of phonetics in phonology. Phonation types are phonetically and phonologically related to other laryngeal and pharyngeal features (tone, tongue root, glottal consonants, registers), to the point where it can be hard even to distinguish phonation type as a separate type of contrast. I touch on these issues and provide readers with questions that I hope can be addressed in future work.

  PublisherDOI

• Utterance-Final Voice Quality in American English and Mexican Spanish Bilinguals

  Languages · 2024-02-21 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  We investigate utterance-final voice quality in bilinguals of English and Spanish, two languages which differ in the type of non-modal voice usually encountered at ends of utterances: American English often has phrase-final creak, whereas in Mexican Spanish, phrase-final voiced sounds are breathy or even devoiced. Twenty-one bilinguals from the San Diego-Tijuana border region were recorded (with electroglottography and audio) reading passages in English and Spanish. Ends of utterances were coded for their visual voice quality as “modal” (having no aspiration noise or voicing irregularity), “breathy” (having aspiration noise), “creaky” (having voicing irregularity), or “breathy-creaky” (having both aspiration noise and voicing irregularity). In utterance-final position, speakers showed more frequent use of both modal and creaky voice when speaking in English, and more frequent use of breathy and breathy-creaky voice when speaking in Spanish. We find no role of language dominance on the rates of these four voice qualities. The electroglottographic and acoustic analyses show that all voice qualities, even utterance-final creak, are produced with increased glottal spreading; the combination of distinct noise measures and amplitude of voicing can distinguish breathy, creaky, and breathy-creaky voice qualities from one another, and from modal voice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A cross-language acoustic space for vocalic phonation distinctions: Supplementary material

  Language · 2023-06-01 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• A Cross-Language Acoustic Space for Vocalic Phonation Distinctions

  Language · 2023 · 24 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Linguistics

  Many languages use phonation types for phonemic or allophonic distinctions. This study examines the acoustic structure of the phonetic space for vowel phonations across languages. Our sample of eleven languages includes languages with contrastive modal, breathy, creaky, lax, tense, harsh, and/or pharyngealized phonations, and languages with allophonic nonmodal phonation on particular tones. In compiling and analyzing this sample we address related issues such as contrast vs. allophony, phonetic similarity across languages, and understanding complex contrasts of several multidimensional phonetic categories via data reduction. Based on extensive acoustic analysis, all of the languages' phonations were mapped into a single phonetic space, which exhibits dispersion (languages with more categories use more of the space). The space is largely two-dimensional, with dimensions that can be interpreted phonetically (e.g. dimension 2 is like a traditional breathy-to-creaky continuum) and also can be related back to the acoustic measures that structure them, thus indicating which acoustic measures are most important across languages.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Acoustic properties of subtypes of creaky voice

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2023-03-01 · 9 citations

  article

  “Creaky voice” is a term that covers multiple kinds of voicing, and there is no single defining acoustic property shared by all subtypes of creaky voice. Here we explore the distinct characteristics of each subtype. We identify three main properties of creaky voice: low f0, irregular f0, and constricted glottis (as shown by electroglottography). Prototypical creaky voice has all of these properties; other subtypes are characterized by different subsets of properties. We will describe, with reference to previous literature, multiply-pulsed creak (a special case of irregular f0, along with low f0), open-glottis creak (low and often irregular f0, but unconstricted glottis), vocal fry (low but regular f0, constricted glottis), and creak with such irregular pulsing that no f0 can be recovered. Building on our previous work [Keating et al. 2015 Proc. ICPhS], we show how various acoustic measures pattern for each subtype. Results from parametric speech synthesis provide support for our acoustic observations.

  PublisherDOI

• Infusing social justice in the development and instruction of a course on the history of phonetics

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2023-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We describe the design and implementation of a mixed undergraduate and graduate seminar on the history of phonetics (from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries). The goal of the course was to teach and learn about the history of the field using a pedagogical framework in which all aspects of the course are framed with the values of antiracism, social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Planning for the course involved discussion between the instructor, the graduate student DEI committee, the department Curriculum Committee, the linguistics librarian, and the teaching and learning resource center. Seminar topics included the development of systems of phonetic annotation and speech technology; the emergence of modern phonetics, speech-language pathology, and linguistics; and advancements in speech acoustics. In this presentation, we will also discuss students’ participation and evaluation of the course, which were very enthusiastic. Overall, we show how a course on the history of phonetics can be modeled and taught in such a way as to show the ways in which our field has marginalized and discriminated against certain communities, as well as to consider the ways in which we may learn from our history so as to be a more just and inclusive discipline moving forward.

  PublisherDOI

• Theoretical achievements of phonetics in the 21st century: Phonetics of voice quality

  Journal of Phonetics · 2022-06-28 · 49 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Twenty years after the publication of a special issue in this journal on non-modal phonation (JPhon 2001: 49(4)), the phonetic study of voice quality has shown impressive progress. Here I focus on what we have learnt over these years about the linguistic sources of voice quality modulation. I stress how voice quality has a role to play in all of speech: among its many functions, the voice is involved in the articulation of all sounds, and voice quality is worth investigating as much for “modal” consonants and vowels as for contrastive phonation type. The voice also encodes structure at many prosodic levels: sub-lexical, lexical, and post-lexical. I further highlight some of the important technological developments and refinement of various voice quality models that have led to progress in the phonetic study of voice quality. Reviewing all of the above, one can only conclude that human voice has a central role to play in the phonetician’s pursuit towards understanding spoken language.

  PublisherDOI

• Tense voice without the high f0: the case of glottalized vowels in Zongozotla Totonac

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2022-10-01 · 2 citations

  article

  Prototypical creaky voice involves increased glottal constriction, lower periodicity, and lower f0. Keating et al. (2015, Proc. ICPhS) argue that other kinds of creaky voice manifest only some of these properties. For example, “tense voice” is constricted but has neither a low nor irregular f0. Although tense voice is usually produced with a high f0, the aforementioned authors suggest that tense voice can also occur with non-high f0. In this study, we argue that glottalized (also known as “laryngealized”;) vowels of Zongozotla Totonac qualify as such: they are produced with tense voice but with non-high f0. Zongozotla Totonac is a Totonac-Tepehua language spoken in the municipality of Zongozotla, Puebla, Mexico. We recorded eight speakers producing nine word pairs that contrast in terms of modal versus glottalized vowels. Compared to modal vowels, glottalized vowels show increased constriction, as indexed by lower spectral tilt and weaker voicing. However, glottalized and modal vowels do not differ in terms of f0 or periodicity. Taken together, the results suggest that glottalized vowels are produced with tense voice, for which the increase in constriction is criterial. This analysis has implications for understanding sound change in Totonac as well as for the taxonomy of creaky voice subtypes.

  PublisherDOI

• On H1–H2 as an acoustic measure of linguistic phonation type

  The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2022-09-01 · 23 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The measure H1-H2, the difference in amplitude between the first and second harmonics, is frequently used to distinguish phonation types and to characterize differences across voices and genders. While H1-H2 can differentiate voices and is used by listeners to perceive changes in voice quality, its relation to voice articulation is less straightforward. Its calculation also involves practical issues with error propagation. This paper highlights some developments in the use of H1-H2 and proposes a new measure that we call "residual H1." In residual H1, the amplitude of the first harmonic is normalized against the overall sound energy (as measured by root mean square energy) instead of against H2. Residual H1 may mitigate some of the issues with using H1-H2. The current study tests the correlation between residual H1 and electroglottographic contact quotient (CQ) and compares the ability of residual H1 vs H1-H2 to differentiate statistically across phonation types in !Xóõ and utterance-level changes in phonatory quality in Mandarin. The results show that residual H1 has a stronger correlation with CQ and differentiates contrastive and allophonic phonatory quality better than H1-H2, particularly for more constricted phonation types.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Stress, tone, and intonation in Choguita Rarámuri

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022 · 32 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Psychology

  Abstract Choguita Rarámuri is a Uto-Aztecan language from Northern Mexico featuring both stress and tone in its word prosody, as well as postlexical intonation. Based on the analysis of instrumental data obtained through field research, this chapter describes how lexical tones in this language are realized in terms of fundamental frequency (f0); how tonal realization varies by phrasal position in declarative sentences; and also how correlates of voice quality help increase the acoustic differentiation across tones for some speakers. In addition, the chapter describes how tone and intonation interact and shows that the incorporation of f0 over pre- and post-tonic syllables generally improves the statistical discriminability of the three tones in utterance-medial position. Therefore, tonal contrasts in this language are as much about paradigmatic differences across the tone categories during the tone-bearing syllable, as they are about syntagmatic changes over at least three syllables centered around the tone-bearing syllable.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Patricia Keating

  University of Strathclyde

  61 shared

• Christina M. Esposito

  Reed College

  60 shared

• Jianjing Kuang

  54 shared

• Sameer ud Dowla Khan

  University of California, Berkeley

  53 shared

• Jody Kreiman

  University of California, Los Angeles

  25 shared

• Bruce R. Gerratt

  University of California, Los Angeles

  18 shared

• Scott Seyfarth

  University of California, San Diego

  12 shared

• Robin A. Samlan

  University of Arizona

  7 shared

Education

• PhD , Linguistics

  University of California Los Angeles

  2013