[TalnSG]

Much of what has been explained here is something I seemed to have understood instinctively, but it was not until the mention of singing "voices" or methods that another couple of aspects to this occurred to me.

When Japanese women speak they are not only raising the pitch, they very carefully controlling the force of their speech, or projection. They strive for softness even more than pitch modulation from what I have encountered (mostly formal exchanges). But a by product of pitch modulation is that same variance of force. One's loudness increases naturally as the pitch is lowered. I can't explain it, but since I sang soprano, alto and even baritone in college choir I had to fight that tendency. When you soften your projection, the tendency is for the range of pitch to rise, so it makes sense that native speakers of Japanese tend to have higher pitched speech.

The other part was a memory that the discussion of higher pitch in speech is conveying innocence tirggered. Everyone is very aware that the male vocal register drops at puberty. So do female voices sometimes. When it does, it is usually less pronounced, but compare the normal voice of a 8 yr old girl with that of maybe an older sister of about 16. The range gap is often significant. I think an unconcious awareness of this may contribute to the perception of a higher voice being more innocent.