The term ‘Phonation’ refers generally to all the movements of the vocal folds in producing speech sounds – and in particular to those sounds that involve vibration of the folds.
The vocal folds can be manipulated in many ways, but linguists usually recognise 5 Phonation Modes which are relevant to speech production. A phonation mode is a category of vocal fold setting that allows a particular type of voice quality.
In this section you can look at the structure of the vocal folds, see how they move, and learn about techniques for viewing them.