My Pom does the "yap-arf" mostly, but when she just wants to talk to me, she carries on and sounds like a monkey chattering. My Shih Tzu does somewhat of a low throaty growly woofy sound when he just wants to talk, but when he's outside barking at something it's a very loud "arf-arf-arf" type bark.
I had a Lhasa that did almost identical to what "Joycenalex" described, and he did it if he was trying to get someone's attention. He would start out with a few muffled snorts, then on to the sneezes, then a few very soft woofs, and then if you still didn't acknowledge him after all that, the full-blown loud bark. I used to pretend to ignore him, just so he'd run thru the whole funny routine!