P Mergell and H Herzel (1997)
Modelling Biphonation - The Role of the Vocal Tract
Speech Communication 22:141-154.
Instabilities of the human voice source appear in
normal voices under certain conditions (newborn
cries, vocal fry, creaky voice) and are symptomatic
of voice pathologies. Vocal instabilities are
intimately related to bifurcations of the underlying
nonlinear dynamical system. We analyse in this paper
bifurcations in 2-mass models of the vocal folds and
study, in particular, how the incorporation of the
vocal tract affects bifurcation diagrams. A
comparison of a simplified model (Steinecke &
Herzel, 1995) with an extended version including
vocal tract resonances reveals that essential
features of the bifurcation diagrams (as
e.g. frequency locking of both folds and toroidal
oscillations) are found in both model
versions. However, vocal instabilities appear in the
extended model at lower subglottal pressures and
even for weak asymmetries.