Acoustic analysis of simple vowels preceding a nasal in Standard Chinese

Abstract

The aims of this study are (1) to determine the acoustic pattern signaling that a syllable in Standard Chinese, SC, contains a nasal coda, and (2) specify the acoustic attributes that distinguish between the two places of articulation for a nasal coda. The first syllable in SC disyllabic words with simple vowels [a], [i], and [e] was examined in different contexts: (1) vowel with a nasal coda [n] or [n] followed by a syllable beginning with a stop or vowel, and (2) vowel without a nasal coda followed by a syllable beginning with a stop or [n]. It was found that a nasal coda can be detected by the presence of a vowel–nasal consonant boundary using the maximum first difference of the first four formant amplitudes or by the amount of vowel nasalization using the time contours of normalized A 1−P 0 and A 1−P 1 (amplitude differences between the first formant and nasal peaks). The places of articulation of nasal codas can be distinguished by the formant frequencies in the vowel and by acoustic attributes at the vowel–nasal consonant boundary.