Nasal Vowels Research Articles

Durational aspects of tautosyllabic vowel nasalization in (Brazilian) Portuguese: An airflow investigation

This study investigates coarticulatory effects caused by the following consonant – either a stop or a fricative – on the duration of the oral and the nasalized portion of the nasal vowel and the nasal murmur in sequences within Portuguese words like tensa [ˈtẽsɐ] ‘tense’ versus tenta [ˈtẽtɐ] ‘(s/he) tries.’ The results replicate previous observations that duration adjustments affect the vowel’s nasalized portion, as is the case for languages in which the speaker intends nasalization. The second hypothesis is that adjustments in duration as a function of the following onset do not affect the nasalization duration, but only the timing of a nasal gesture relatively constant in duration. Results show that irrespective of the following consonant ([s] or [t]), nasalization remains constant in duration. However, a shorter nasal murmur or a more extended postnasal consonantal oral portion does not follow more extended vowel nasalization. As the entire VNC sequence increases on an individual basis, so does the nasalization. Still, increasing nasalization comes at a cost for the duration of the oral part of the vowel irrespective of [s, t]. These results are compatible with that speaking rate influences coordination timing between the beginning of the vowel and the beginning of nasalization.

Representing the moraic nasal in Japanese: evidence from Tōkyō, Ōsaka and Kagoshima

This article reconsiders the nature and representation of the moraic nasal <N> in Japanese dialects, which is largely assumed to be a consonantal mora (Ito 1987, Vance 2008, Labrune 2008) or a variable segment (Yoshida S. 1996, 2003; Yoshida Y. 1999). I examine phonological processes and phonetic descriptions of the Tōkyō, Ōsaka and Kagoshima varieties of Japanese and show that previous representations do not capture all of the facts. I propose that N is best represented variously as a nasal consonant, a syllabic nasal or a nasal vowel depending on the dialect. I frame this account within the theory of Strict CV (Lowenstamm 1996) and I present new representations for N, taking into account segmental and prosodic behaviour of this segment. The overarching contribution is an analysis where the tonal status of N in Japanese dialects is directly derived from the status of nuclear positions that N is associated to or adjacent to, without reference to feature sensitive rules.

Dialect in the consciousness of rural inhabitants (the example of Kielce and Opoczno regions)

The subject matter of the article is the way in which the rural population of two regions, namely Kielce and Opoczno, sees their language. Field studies were conducted in 2018, involving mainly the oldest residents of the village of Lasocin, Kielce County (1993–1997 and later) and 40 villages in Opoczno County in 2018. The responses, recorded using a voice recorder, show that they treat dialect as a variety of language of a limited geographical range: mainly local (borders of one village, several neighbouring villages); regional (e.g. Silesia, Kaszuby, Kielce, Opoczno, Podhale, Kurpie and others), characteristic of the oldest generation. The dialect is also, in their opinion, a vital indicator of local identity, an essential element of community ties (cf. mówić po nasemu). The dialect in the consciousness of the speakers is distinguished by certain linguistic features from the phonetic subsystem, e.g. a narrowed vowel articulation a→o, e→i, y, articulation broadening i, y→e, e.g. piełka, bieł, beła, labialisation of the initial o, denasalisation of nasal vowels ą→o, ę→e, and lexis, e.g. kaj, źmioki, zaściegacka, podwyrze, plindze, nizinier.

Partial compensation for coarticulatory vowel nasalization across concatenative and neural text-to-speech.

This study investigates the perception of coarticulatory vowel nasality generated using different text-to-speech (TTS) methods in American English. Experiment 1 compared concatenative and neural TTS using a 4IAX task, where listeners discriminated between a word pair containing either both oral or nasalized vowels and a word pair containing one oral and one nasalized vowel. Vowels occurred either in identical or alternating consonant contexts across pairs to reveal perceptual sensitivity and compensatory behavior, respectively. For identical contexts, listeners were better at discriminating between oral and nasalized vowels in neural than in concatenative TTS for nasalized same-vowel trials, but better discrimination for concatenative TTS was observed for oral same-vowel trials. Meanwhile, listeners displayed less compensation for coarticulation in neural than in concatenative TTS. To determine whether apparent roboticity of the TTS voice shapes vowel discrimination and compensation patterns, a "roboticized" version of neural TTS was generated (monotonized f0 and addition of an echo), holding phonetic nasality constant; a ratings study (experiment 2) confirmed that the manipulation resulted in different apparent roboticity. Experiment 3 compared the discrimination of unmodified neural TTS and roboticized neural TTS: listeners displayed lower accuracy in identical contexts for roboticized relative to unmodified neural TTS, yet the performances in alternating contexts were similar.

A Diachronic Account of Exceptional Progressive Nasalization Patterns in Guarani Causatives

Nasal harmony in Paraguayan Guarani spreads mostly leftward in a morphological word. This regressive nasalization is triggered by a phonologically nasal consonant or stressed nasal vowel and does not affect voiceless stops. A limited process of progressive nasalization affects morpheme-initial voiceless stops across a morpheme boundary. Many forms that include a causative prefix show this kind of progressive nasalization. However, this nasal spread lacks any obvious nasal trigger and does not occur consistently. In this paper, I propose an explanation of these cases as vestiges of earlier phonological rules from pre-Proto-Tupi-Guarani but not active in Paraguayan Guarani, followed by the emergence of a regressive oralization rule and ending in a reanalysis of the basic form of the causative prefix. In so doing, I will provide a revised sequence of changes involving contour allophones in the reconstruction of Proto-Tupi-Guarani (PTG).

Problems in uttering French nasal vowels for Jordanian learners of French as a foreign language

"Un bon vin blanc" (A fine white wine), is a French sentence in which every French nasal vowel that will be discussed in this article: [œ̃ ], [ɔ̃], [ɛ̃], [ɑ̃] is represented. Nasal vowels are « produced by lowering the velum and allowing the air to pass outward through the nose » (Halle, Morris, et Clements 1983). This phenomenon is called nasalization. If students of French as a foreign language are not able to produce such nasal sounds, they will not be able to properly pronounce these French vowels. Students face several sorts of difficulties whilst trying to utter French phonemes in general, but nasal sounds’ utterance is rewarding and motivating for them once the teacher succeeded in making them pronounce it correctly. This article aims at proposing pedagogical and technical ways while suggesting efficient solutions and strategies in order to correct Jordanian students’ pronunciations while making them discriminate the proper sounds. The language laboratory then plays a significant role in the acquisition of these nasal sounds in the university program. Keywords: nasal sounds, nasal vowels, French as a foreign language, Jordanian learners, pronunciation, utterance, difficulties, propositions and solutions.

A study of vowel nasalization using instantaneous spectra

Nasalization of vowels is a phenomenon where the oral and nasal tracts participate simultaneously in the production of speech. Acoustic coupling of the oral and nasal tracts, together with the glottal activity, results in a complex dynamic production system. The extent of coupling determines the degree of nasalization in vowels. Changes in the instantaneous response of the vocal tract system are used to study the effects of co-articulatory load of nasals on vowels. Dominant resonance frequency (DRF) contour is extracted from the instantaneous response of the system to determine the duration of the vowel nasalization. The extent of coupling determines the relative dominance of the oral and nasal resonances during the open and closed phases of a glottal cycle. Larger coupling leads to more decay of the energy of the oral resonances, and hence the vowel spectra exhibit predominantly the nasal resonances characteristics. Comparison with the existing measures show the effectiveness of the proposed measures for determining vowel nasalization. Segments of vowels in the context of nasal consonants from utterances of both male and female speakers of English are used to illustrate different aspects of this study on vowel nasalization.

Oral configurations during vowel nasalization in English

Speech nasalization is achieved primarily through the opening and closing of the velopharyngeal port. However, the resultant acoustic features can also be influenced by tongue configuration. Although vowel nasalization is not contrastive in English, two previous studies have found possible differences in the oral articulation of nasal and oral vowel productions, albeit with inconsistent results. In an attempt to further understand the conflicting findings, we evaluated the oral kinematics of nasalized and non-nasalized vowels in a cohort of both male and female American English speakers via electromagnetic articulography. Tongue body and lip positions were captured during vowels produced in nasal and oral contexts (e.g., /mɑm/, /bɑb/). Large contrasts were seen in all participants between tongue position of /æ/ in oral and nasal contexts, in which tongue positions were higher and more forward during /mæm/ than /bæb/. Lip aperture was smaller in a nasal context for /æ/. Lip protrusion was not different between vowels in oral and nasal contexts. Smaller contrasts in tongue and lip position were seen for vowels /ɑ, i, u/; this is consistent with biomechanical accounts of vowel production that suggest that /i, u/ are particularly constrained, whereas /æ/ has fewer biomechanical constraints, allowing for more flexibility for articulatory differences in different contexts. Thus we conclude that speakers of American English do indeed use different oral configurations for vowels that are in nasal and oral contexts, despite vowel nasalization being non-contrastive. This effect was consistent across speakers for only one vowel, perhaps accounting for previously-conflicting results.

Generating Vowel Nasality for a Rule-Based Bangla Speech Synthesizer

Bangla is a useful language to study nasal vowels because all the vowels have their corresponding nasal vowel counterpart. Vowel nasality generation is an important task for artificial nasality production in speech synthesizer. Various methods have been employed by many researchers for generating vowel nasality. Vowel nasality generation for a rule-basedspeech synthesizer has not been studied yet for Bangla. This study discusses several methods using full spectrum and partial spectrum for generating vowel nasality to use in a rule-basedBangla text to speech (TTS) system using demisyllable. In a demisyllable based Bangla TTS 1400 demisyllables are needed to be stored in database. Transforming the vowel part of a demisyllable into its nasal counterpart reduces the speech database size to 700 demisyllables. Comparative study of the e

A practical method of estimating the time-varying degree of vowel nasalization from acoustic features.

This paper presents a simple and easy-to-use method of creating a time-varying signal of the degree of nasalization in vowels, generated from acoustic features measured in oral and nasalized vowel contexts. The method is presented for separate models constructed using two sets of acoustic features: (1) an uninformed set of 13 Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) and (2) a combination of the 13 MFCCs and a phonetically informed set of 20 acoustic features of vowel nasality derived from previous research. Both models are compared against two traditional approaches to estimating vowel nasalization from acoustics: A1-P0 and A1-P1, as well as their formant-compensated counterparts. Data include productions from six speakers of different language backgrounds, producing 11 different qualities within the vowel quadrilateral. The results generated from each of the methods are compared against nasometric measurements, representing an objective "ground truth" of the degree of nasalization. The results suggest that the proposed method is more robust than conventional acoustic approaches, generating signals which correlate strongly with nasometric measures across all vowel qualities and all speakers and accurately approximate the time-varying change in the degree of nasalization. Finally, an experimental example is provided to help researchers implement the method in their own study designs.

Acoustic investigation of anticipatory vowel nasalization in a Caribbean and a non-Caribbean dialect of Spanish

AbstractSpanish dialectology observes that dialects with a preference for velarized variants of /n/ (e.g. Caribbean dialects) include nasalized vocalic allophones in their inventory. Instrumental cross-dialectal comparisons of Spanish anticipatory nasalization, however, remain surprisingly rare. To this end, I compare the time-course of nasality in pre-nasal vowels in Argentine and Dominican Spanish, as well as across a number of linguistic variables described in the phonetic, sociolinguistic and historical literature. Twenty-eight speakers from Santo Domingo and twenty-six from Buenos Aires were recorded with a nasometer, an ideal instrument for data collection in the field. Measurements of nasal energy were extracted to acoustically characterize the time-course of nasality. Results indicate that Dominican speakers present more extensive anticipatory vowel nasalization than Argentine speakers. These findings are consistent with observations of allophonic nasalization (i.e. phonologized) in the Caribbean dialect under study, Dominican Spanish. Regarding the linguistic variables, stressed pre-nasal vowels showed earlier onset of nasalization, particularly among the Caribbean speakers, which further provides support for the phonological differences in vowel nasality.

Una traccia padovano-veneziana nella Cracovia degli inizi del XVI secolo

Three accounts in Polish whose fabula focuses on Paduan and Venetian realia were found by Stanisław Estreicher in the last part of a Latin juridical codex written in the 1520s. They are not translations and have no literary worth; however, they can be interesting from a sociological point of view. In this article, we point out, on the basis of what has already been established by Estreicher, the writing context in which these stories were written in the code. Estreicher hypothesised that the stories, on the basis of their spelling, had been written not by a Pole, but by a foreigner who knew the Polish language by ear. Estreicher also hypothesised, and not wrongly, that in the 1520s, the goldsmiths’ guild, which was at that time chaired by an Italian and an German, had come into possession of that code. A comparison with the spelling of other Polish-language texts written between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century, however, shows that many of the graphic solutions used were well attested at the time; amongst these was the singular spelling to mark the posterior nasal vowel. In any case, the writer who wrote those accounts made an effort to maintain some coherence in spelling. Despite such an effort, the general impression is that those short stories were written by a non-Polish speaker, rather than by a foreigner who resided and worked in Krakow. These accounts are certainly traces of the presence, in Krakow and Poland, of the numerous Venetians who had started thriving entrepreneurial activities in the Respublica Polono-Lituana.

Planting the seed for sound change: Evidence from real-time MRI of velum kinematics in German

Velum movement signals generated from real-time magnetic resonance imaging videos of thirty-five German speakers were used to investigate the physiological conditions that might promote sound change involving the development of contrastive vowel nasality. The results suggest that, in comparison to when a nasal consonant precedes a voiced obstruent, the velum gesture associated with a nasal consonant preceding a voiceless obstruent undergoes gestural rescaling and temporal rephasing. This further suggests that the diachronic development of contrastive vowel nasality comprises two stages: the first stage involves gestural shortening and realignment, while the second stage involves a trading relationship between source and effect.

Word-final /ɔ̃/ in Greater Poland Polish: A Cumulative Context Effect?

An empirical corpus-based study of the likelihood of realizing the Polish nasal vowel /ɔ̃/ word-finally as [ɔm] (i.e. of 'nasal stopping') is presented. The goal was to verify whether the phenomenon exhibits a cumulative context effect, with words typically occurring in an environment favoring a particular phonetic variant showing higher rates of that variant regardless of environment. The results show that nasal stopping is more likely before stop-initial words than before words beginning in other sounds, if there is no intervening pause. Results with regard to the hypothesis that words typically followed by stops will show higher likelihood of nasal stopping, however, remain inconclusive.

The Jen language cluster: A comparative analysis of wordlists

A lexicostatistical analysis divides the Jen language cluster into two primary branches Burak-Loo-Maghdi-Mak and Kyak-Moo-Leelau-Tha-Doso-Dza. This is also supported by extensive isoglosses, replacing the older Bikwin-Jen division at least for purposes of genetic classification. For vowels, a 9-vowel system is reconstructed, but its 3-way height contrasts appear unstable in some languages, either in the central vowels or in the front and back vowels. Front and back vowels also vary widely with diphthongs. Prosodic features of nasalisation, tone, and breathiness are reconstructed, with nasalisation developing in more roots in the second primary branch. For consonants, the large inventory includes particularly unstable coronals, and development of voiceless approximants in Doso-Dza. The comparative evidence is conflicting as to whether labialised and palatalised structures are secondary modifications or onset sequences, suggesting the need for a variationist approach. Overall, riverine Jen varieties Tha, Doso, Dza show unusually extensive sound change, in contrast to the more phonologically stable Bikwin varieties. Applications to orthography development include the need to represent implosives and /r/ in languages other than Dza, where they have been lost, and the need to represent vowel nasalisation and /h/ in languages of the second branch only. Initial stem consonant alternations seen in both nouns and verbs need more investigation in Jen languages.

Context effects on the acoustic realization of stops and affricates in Northern Pwo Karen

Studies have shown that the voice onset time (VOT) of alveolo-palatal affricates is the longest, followed by velars, dental/alveolars, and bilabials. In a reciprocal pattern, closure duration is the longest for bilabials, followed by dental/alveolars, and then velars. Longer VOT is also associated with high and front vowels and tones with rising components. Moreover, the VOT of voiceless unaspirated stops is reported to be longer and closure duration shorter in nasal words. Finally, the voiceless interval has been described as constant in some languages and inconstant in others. Given the evidence of previous research, this study investigates the effects of place, nasality, tone, and vowel quality on the VOT, closure duration, and voiceless interval of the voiced and voiceless obstruents of Northern Pwo Karen (N. Pwo), a language of Thailand. N. Pwo (ISO 639-3 pww) is a ‘true voicing’ language with a three-way distinction in stops, voiceless aspirated and unaspirated affricates, oral and nasal vowels, and six tones (four modal tones and two glottalized tones). In N. Pwo, the place effects on VOT and closure duration pattern reciprocally. Whereas, both VOT and the voiceless interval are longer before oral vowels compared to nasal vowels. VOT is longest before the mid tone, which has a slight rise, while it is the shortest before the falling-glottalized tone. This pattern is reversed for the closure duration of aspirates and voiced stops. Finally, VOT, closure duration, and the voiceless interval are the longest before high and front vowels.

Nasalização regressiva heterossilábica (NRH) da vogal /a/ acentuada em PE

According to the autosegmental model adopted by Mateus & Andrade (2000), the nasal vowel in Portuguese, in words such as cinco, lã and campo, is a phonetic form derived from a phonological oral vowel plus a nasal autosegment N in the same syllable. However, we can also notice the nasalization in words such as cãma, cẽna and cũnha in Portuguese, although not often in the standard language. This phenomenon is an heterosyllabic regressive nasalization (NRH), in which the nasal consonant of the onset nasalizes the previous vowel. In Brazilian Portuguese, there are more studies related to NRH than in European Portuguese and most of them treat it as a phonetic phenomenon (Câmara Jr., 1970; Battisti, 1997; Botelho, 2007). Moraes & Wetzels (1992) find NRH more frequently in the stressed syllable and with the palatal consonant /ɲ/, but its frequency varies in different dialects. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the variation of NRH in Mainland Portugal and the phonological processes that go together with it, focusing particularly on the structure /a/[+ac] .C[+nas] (/m/, /n/, /ɲ/). We collected occurrences that contain the target structure from the corpus Linguistic-Ethnographic Atlas of Portugal and Galicia and our analysis is based on the phonetic transcriptions performed by CLUL dialectologists. By calculating the percentage of NRH in each locality and making dialectal maps, the results show that: i) NRH can be found almost throughout the entire territory; ii) it has a greater frequency in Northwest (mainly with the consonant /ɲ/), Beira Baixa, Alentejo, and Algarve; iii) multiple phenomena transform the phonological segments into different phonetic shapes; iv) in a diachronic analysis, the changing path of /a/ in Portuguese in this structure is: [a] → [ã] → [ɐ̃]→ [ɐ], which shows that the elevation of /a/ follows the NRH. Dialects, then, choose between one of these phonetic variants.

Elementos de la morfofonología del chiquitano migueleño

Este artículo describe algunos de los procesos morfofonológicos y una restricción morfofonológica atestiguados en la variedad del idioma chiquitano (familia macro-ye) hablada en San Miguel de Velasco (Santa Cruz, Bolivia), con base en datos recogidos en campo con cinco hablantes nativos. Se describen detalladamente la nasalización a distancia de las consonantes continuas y de las vocales altas; la africación de |t k| en determinados ambientes; la palatalización progresiva de |p β̞ m t k x|; las restricciones de minimalidad que aplican a los temas nominales; cinco tipos de armonía vocálica que afectan afijos o clíticos específicos; el proceso de elevación de |o| a /u/ delante de una sílaba que contiene /a/; el proceso de descenso de |i| a /ɛ/ delante de /s ts/; la elisión morfofonológica de vocales orales altas. Algunos de los procesos documentados son compartidos por otras variedades del chiquitano, mientras que otros no tienen equivalentes conocidos en los demás dialectos.

Phonological Sketch of Malay Jambi Language of Sarolangun, Indonesia

This research is a cross-sectional sample survey with a qualitative approach of Malay Jambi’s phonology in Sarolangun Regency. The data was collected in the field using observation and interview methods. It has a form of notes, interview transcriptions, and audio and video recordings. The data was analyzed using a phonetic articulator matching method with a diving-key-factors technique as a basis. The results are presented based on the phonetic symbols of the IPA Chart (revised 2005). As found in the research, Malay Jambi of Sarolangun has six vowels and twenty consonants, one of which does not occur in native Malay Jambi words. Beyond the phonological system description, this paper discusses various features found in Sarolangun like nasalization and laxing of vowels, consonant and syllable deletion, or glide insertion.Â

Polish word-final nasal vowels

Although there exists a set of prescriptive rules concerning the realization of Polish nasal vowels, it can be observed that their pronunciation differs across dialects, especially in word-final position. While there is ample research on vowel nasality in Polish, sociolinguistic studies investigating the realization of nasal vowels seem to be scant and this is why we aim to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between the realization of word-final nasal vowels and different sociolinguistic factors including age, gender, education, place of residence, and style (read vs. conversational speech). Moreover, we focus on a potential change in prestige associated with the variation. Fifty native speakers of Polish living in Greater Poland were asked to read aloud a text and describe a picture. Having analysed the words containing nasal vowels word-finally, we found, inter alia, statistically significant associations between age and the variation in the realization of nasal vowels.