Coarticulatory nasalization in modern Greek: Evidence for a link between coarticulation and syllable structure

Abstract

An acoustic analysis of the temporal extent of vowel nasalization in the productions of six native speakers of (Standard) Modern Greek showed that the temporal extent of anticipatory vowel nasalization is limited in all contexts, although it is more extensive before tautosyllabic than heterosyllabic nasals. (On average, in stressed syllables, heterosyllabic anticipatory nasalization was 27 ms long, tautosyllabic anticipatory was 48 ms long, and carryover was 70 ms.) Modern Greek patterns in this aspect with languages like Spanish, Italian, Ikalanga, which also show a tendency toward open syllables, and obstruents are, in general, dispreferred as codas. It is hypothesized that there may be a link between a tendency for open syllables in a language and limited extent of anticipatory nasalization and it is suggested that investigation of the prosodic organization of languages may prove fruitful in determining the factors that lead to cross-language coarticulatory differences regarding vowel nasalization.