Dr. Eddie Chang

As the air is coming out, the vocal folds come together and air goes through.

That creates the sound of the voice that we call voicing.

It's not just your voice characteristic, it's the energy of your voice.

It's coming from the larynx there.

It's a noise.

And then it's the source of the voice.

And then what happens is that energy, that sound, goes up through the parts of the vocal tract, like the pharynx, into the oral cavity, which is your mouth and your tongue and your lips.

And what those things are doing is that they're shaping the air in particular ways that create consonants and vowels.

That's what I mean by shaping the breath.

It just starts with this exhalation.

You generate the voice in the larynx, and then everything above the larynx is moving around, just like the way my mouth is doing right now, to shape that air into particular patterns that you can hear his words.

We call those vocalizations.

A vocalization is basically where someone can create a sound like a cry or a moan, that kind of sound.

And it also involves the exhalation of air.

It also involves some phonation at the level of the larynx where the vocal folds

come together to create that audible sound.

But it turns out that those are actually different areas.

So people who have injuries in the speech and language areas oftentimes can still moan.

They can still vocalize.

And it is a different part of the brain.