SRPP: Ejectives and implosives in Human Beatboxing

This talk will focus on ejectives and implosives in Human Beatboxing. Human Beatboxing is a musical style in which artists produce instrumental and electronic rhythms with the vocal tract articulators. Ejectives and implosives are phonologically rare (about 19% of the languages of the PHOIBLE 2.0 database). However, ejectives can be phonetically found in spontaneous speech (McCarthy & Stuart-Smith, 2013; Simpson, 2014) and they are quite common in Human Beatboxing (Blaylock, 2022). While ejectives and implosives are well-documented, they are poorly understood since little direct evidence have been given on upward (ejectives) and downward (implosives) movement of the larynx and its relation to intraoral pressure. Based on aerodynamic, laryngoscopic and MRI data of 4 professional beatboxers, we investigated beatboxing ejectives and implosives. The results showed pressure ranged between -90hPa to +100hPa and that pressure variation depends on pharyngeal gestures rather than laryngeal height. We do not know whether the same mechanism is used in the world’s languages. Nevertheless, it seems very unlikely that one mechanism would be use to speak and a different one to beatbox. Our findings have substantial implications for the categorization and sound change of ejectives and implosives.