Voice quality

Definition
Term referring to the permanently present quality of voice of a particular speaker. An individual's voice quality is based on the combination of factors such as pitch level, loudness, tempo, timbre, breathiness, tenseness, nasality, hoarseness, etc. Voice quality may also have a contrastive function in the phonological system of a language. Breathiness, for example, is phonemic for vowels in Gujarati and for stops in Igbo (Ladefoged &amp; Maddieson, 1996)

Links

 * Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics
 * More about voice quality