Patterns of soft palate movements in six languages

Abstract

It has frequently been observed that soft palate elevation during vowels is correlated with the height of the vowel, that is, the soft palate is higher for high vowels and lower for low vowels. In order to see how generally this correlation between vowel height and degree of nasalization is exhibited, velic movements were monitored in the speech of 14 subjects by means of a photoelectric device, the nasograph. Subjects for the experiments were speakers of American English, Swedish, French, Amoy Chinese, Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese. The results indeed reveal a tendency among the subjects to nasalize low vowels more than high ones. The velum lowers earlier during a low vowel than during a high one, and some subjects exhibit greater extent of lowering during low vowels than high ones. In addition, the degree of coarticulated nasality is language-specific: the American and Brazilian speakers exhibit the greatest amount of assimilatory nasalization on vowels, whereas the Amoy speakers show the least. During post-nasal vowels which precede oral consonants as spoken by American English speakers, there is a strong correlation between vowel height and the timing of velic closure, whereas in Hindi and Swedish speakers this correlation is much weaker.