Palatal Nasal Research Articles

The Phonetic Nature of PAn *j

Abstract: This paper brings evidence from Campidanese Sardinian and other languages to support and refine the author's earlier proposal that Proto-Austronesian *j was a palatal nasal whose modern reflexes arose through an episode of palatal glide fortition. It clarifies the evolution of *j in Formosan, responds to some criticisms, and details the circumstances leading to the loss of the nasal component after glide fortition. It concludes that where an alveolar or palatal nasal is in correspondence with [g], [ɟ], or [d], the default historical interpretation is of the nasal.

Squib: The Phonetic Nature of PAN *j

This paper brings evidence from Campidanese Sardinian and other languages to support and refine the author’s earlier proposal that Proto-Austronesian *j was a palatal nasal whose modern reflexes arose through an episode of palatal glide fortition. It clarifies the evolution of *j in Formosan, responds to some criticisms, and details the circumstances leading to the loss of the nasal component after glide fortition. It concludes that where an alveolar or palatal nasal is in correspondence with [g], [ ɟ], or [d], the default historical interpretation is of the nasal.

Pathways to depalatalization of the palatal nasal in Quebec and hexagonal French: An EPG study

Abstract The palatal nasal is one of French’s most variable consonants with attested variants including [ɲ] alongside [nj] and, less frequently, [n] and [ŋ]. Variation is conditioned by both linguistic (position in the word, lexical item, flanking vowels) and speaker variables (in particular, variety). Except for insights provided by the studies reviewed in Recasens (2013), little is known of the articulatory properties of French /ɲ/ including the degree of inter-varietal and -speaker variation or the proportion of coronal and velar depalatalized realizations. We present here an electropalatographic (EPG) study of two European (EF) and two Quebec French (QF) speakers’ /ɲ/ production in both word-medial and -final positions in isolated and contextualized words. Quantitative indices and qualitative investigation of the linguopalatal contact profiles reveal that the EF speakers produced a relatively anterior /ɲ/, differing minimally from /n/ followed by /j/. Whereas one of their QF peers produced uniquely backed velar realizations of /ɲ/, the other speaker had fronted alveolopalatal variants word-medially versus backed velar realizations word-finally, with the latter differing minimally from the /ŋ/ of jogging. These findings are consistent with pathways to depalatalization observed in other Romance varieties and call into question the phonemic status of the palatal nasal in French.

The Effects of L1 English Constraints on the Acquisition of the L2 Spanish Alveopalatal Nasal.

This study examines whether L1 English/L2 Spanish learners at different proficiency levels acquire a novel L2 phoneme, the Spanish palatal nasal /ɲ/. While alveolar /n/ is part of the Spanish and English inventories, /ɲ/, which consists of a tautosyllabic palatal nasal+glide element, is not. This crosslinguistic disparity presents potential difficulty for L1 English speakers due to L1 segmental and phonotactic constraints; the closest English approximation is the heterosyllabic sequence /nj/ (e.g., “canyon” /kænjn/ ['khæn.jn], cf. Spanish cañón “canyon” /kaɲon/ [ka.'ɲon]). With these crosslinguistic differences in mind, we ask: (1a) Do L1 English learners of L2 Spanish produce acoustically distinct Spanish /n/ and /ɲ/ and (1b) Does the distinction of /n/ and /ɲ/ vary by proficiency? In the case that learners distinguish /n/ and /ɲ/, the second question investigates the acoustic quality of /ɲ/ to determine (2a) if learners' L2 representation patterns with that of an L1 Spanish representation or if learners rely on an L1 representation (here, English /nj/) and (2b) if the acoustic quality of L2 Spanish /ɲ/ varies as a function of proficiency. Beginner (n = 9) and advanced (n = 8) L1 English/L2 Spanish speakers and a comparison group of 10 L1 Spanish/L2 English speakers completed delayed repetition tasks in which disyllabic nonce words were produced in a carrier phrase. English critical items contained an intervocalic heterosyllabic /nj/ sequence (e.g., ['phan.jə]); Spanish critical items consisted of items with either intervocalic onset /ɲ/ (e.g., ['xa.ɲa]) or /n/ ['xa.na]. We measured duration and formant contours of the following vocalic portion as acoustic indices of the /n/~/ɲ/ and /ɲ/ ~/nj/ distinctions. Results show that, while L2 Spanish learners produce an acoustically distinct /n/ ~ /ɲ/ contrast even at a low level of proficiency, the beginners produce an intermediate /ɲ/ that falls acoustically between their English /nj/ and the L1 Spanish /ɲ/ while the advanced learners' Spanish /ɲ/ and English /nj/ appear to be in the process of equivalence classification. We discuss these outcomes as they relate to the robustness of L1 phonological constraints in late L2 acquisition coupled with the role of perceptual cues, functional load, and questions of intelligibility.

Shared or Separate Representations? The Spanish Palatal Nasal in Early Spanish/English Bilinguals

The purpose of this study is to examine phonetic interactions in early Spanish/English bilinguals to see if they have established a representation for the Spanish palatal nasal /ɲ/ (e.g., /kaɲon/ cañón ‘canyon’) that is separate from the similar, yet acoustically distinct English /n+j/ sequence (e.g., /kænjn̩/ ‘canyon’). Twenty heritage speakers of Spanish completed a delayed repetition task in each language, in which a set of disyllabic nonce words were produced in a carrier phrase. English critical stimuli contained an intervocalic /n+j/ sequence (e.g., /dɛnjɑ/ ‘denya’) and Spanish critical stimuli contained intervocalic /ɲ/ (e.g., /deɲja/ ‘deña’). We measured the duration and formant contours of the following vocalic portion as acoustic indices of the /ɲ/~/n+j/ distinction. The duration data and formant contour data alike show that early bilinguals distinguish between the Spanish /ɲ/ and English /n+j/ in production, indicative of the maintenance of separate representations for these similar sounds and thus a lack of interaction between systems for bilinguals in this scenario. We discuss these discrete representations in comparison to previous evidence of shared and separate representations in this population, examining a set of variables that are potentially responsible for the attested distinction.

Gramática fonológica e ensino de inglês como língua adicional: aproximando a linguística formal da linguística aplicada

Partindo do pressuposto de que a teoria fonológica pode dialogar com o contexto educacional, este trabalho tem como objetivo principal apresentar e explicitar a relevância da gramática fonológica para o ensino de línguas adicionais, neste caso, o inglês. Para tanto, discutiremos dados de aquisição de aprendizes brasileiros de inglês (GUTIERRES, 2016) para o desenvolvimento da gramática da língua-alvo, analisados à luz da Teoria da Otimidade Estocástica (Boersma; Hayes, 2001). Os dados revelam que, na aprendizagem da nasal velar [ŋ] das palavras terminadas com -ing em inglês, há alternância sistemática entre as nasais velar/velarizada e a palatal (variação), demonstrando a gradualidade que caracteriza a aquisição e a variabilidade que é inerente à aprendizagem de línguas. Dessa forma, há uma demanda para a atualização e o esclarecimento do conceito de gramática, buscando dissociá-la da unicidade da concepção tradicional que ignora a produção linguística do aprendiz e lhe apenas prescreve formas tidas como corretas de expressão.

Word-initial trill clusters in children with typical versus protracted phonological development: Bulgarian

ABSTRACTThe current paper describes acquisition of word-initial (WI) trilled /r/ in clusters and as a singleton in 60 Bulgarian 3–5-year-olds with typically developing (TD) versus protracted phonological development (PPD). A native speaker audio-recorded and transcribed single-word responses to a picture-naming task (110 words) that included eight words with WI rhotic clusters and two with WI singleton /r/. Accuracy was significantly higher in the TD groups and for the PPD groups, by age. Mismatch patterns varied: the PPD cohort had the most varied patterns although the younger children with PPD showed more /r/ deletion in clusters, and the TD groups and 5-year-olds with PPD more substitutions for /r/. Substitutions for rhotics included taps (most frequent; possibly an acceptable variant), voiced uvular and palatal fricatives, laterals, glides, other rhotics, stops and nasals. These results add to the growing database on Bulgarian phonological acquisition concerning accuracy and mismatches by group and age.

Spanish ‘depalatalization’: the synchronic, diachronic and perception perspectives

Spanish has a restriction on palatal nasals and laterals in the coda causing them to be realized as dental/alveolar coronals. In the onset position, the palatal point of articulation is retained, bello ‘beautiful-masc.’, beldad ‘beauty’; doña ‘Madam’, don ‘Mister’. Alternations such as these led phonologists to propose a rule of depalatalization that turns an underlying palatal nasal/lateral into a coronal (Contreras 1977; Harris 1983). Pensado (1997) and Harris (1999) later tried to debunk this rule, the former on psycholinguistic grounds, and the latter on the basis of the word structure of Spanish (palatals are always followed by –e). More recently, within an optimality-theoretic framework and through loan word evidence, Lloret and Mascaró (2006) argue again in favor of an active process of depalatalization in Modern Spanish. Taking Lloret and Mascaró as its point of departure, this paper expands the discussion on depalatalization to consider diachronic data and the role of the underlying representation and the perception grammar. Historical data supports depalatalization as an active phenomenon in Old and Medieval Spanish; yet the morphophonological alternations cannot be considered active/productive synchronically. Unlike previous serial models of phonology, an OT framework allows for the incorporation of diachronic data into the analysis, thus explaining how the current situation came about and shedding light on synchronic alternations. OT also provides a formalization of the role of the underlying representation in the diachronic change and in synchronic loanword evidence, thus providing support for depalatalization as an active phonotactic restriction.

Vowel Raising in Nkpor Dialect: A Pattern of Sound Change

This paper explores a pattern of phonological change known as vowel raising in the Nkpor dialect of the Igbo language. Using a corpus of conversational Nkpor speech collected from the respondents through tape-recording, we presented data from an authority analysis of the vowels and auditory data of vowel raising. The data support three main claims. First, the voiced palatal nasal /ɲ/ is elided. It claims that in a word consisting of two root verbs, the initial verb root contains any consonant and any vowel, and the second verb root contains the voiced palatal nasal /ɲ/ and a mid front vowel /e/, then, the voiced palatal nasal is elided. Second, after the elision, the mid vowel /e/ of the second verb is raised to a high front vowel /i/ or /ɪ/, agreeing with the vowel harmony rule. Third, Nkpor dialect goes beyond the raising of only vowels of the second verb. It further raises vowels of the first verb which are not high. The much more rapid loss of the voiced palatal nasal /ɲ/ and the consequent raising of the vowels are plausibly attributed to rapid speech, especially in construction and some sociolinguistic factors.

Palatal Complexity Revisited: An Electropalatographic Analysis of /ɲ/ in Brazilian Portuguese with Comparison to Peninsular Spanish

Are palatal consonants articulated by multiple tongue gestures (coronal and dorsal) or by a single gesture that brings the tongue into contact with the palate at several places of articulation? The lenition of palatal consonants (resulting in approximants) has been presented as evidence that palatals are simple, not complex: When reduced, they do not lose their coronal gesture and become dorsals; instead, they manifest reduced linguopalatal contact while retaining their anterior place of articulation. The frequently-reported deocclusivization of the Brazilian Portuguese (BP) palatal nasal may support this claim. However, the linguopalatal configuration of this sound has not been studied directly. Electropalatographic evidence from three speakers of BP (compared with data from three speakers of Peninsular Spanish) demonstrates that the palatal nasal is frequently realized as an approximant. There is no evidence of anterior occlusion in BP's post-palatal, lenited nasal. Under conditions of focus/hyperarticulation, there is no evidence of stronger/more anterior occlusion. We argue that the articulatory target of the BP palatal nasal is neither occluded nor anterior.

Formant Transitions as Effective Cues to Differentiate the Places of Articulation of Ban Pa La-U Sgaw Karen Nasals

The Sgaw Karen dialect of Ban Pa La–u, Amphoe Hua Hin, Thailand, has four nasals: /m/, /n/, /ɲ/, and /ŋ/, that appear in syllable–initial position. Review of the relevant literature indicates that initial /ɲ/ has been less studied acoustically due to the lack of palatal nasals in the consonant systems of most languages. Thus, this Sgaw Karen dialect is suitable for investigating the place of articulation of nasals.

Articulatory characteristics of coronal consonants in Argentine Spanish: An electropalatographic study.

Previous articulatory investigations of Spanish have been largely limited to its Peninsular varieties. This study uses electropalatography (EPG) to investigate articulatory characteristics of coronal consonant contrasts in Argentine Spanish as part of a larger project examining phonetic variation across Spanish dialects. Simultaneous EPG and acoustic data were collected from four female speakers of Buenos Aires Spanish reading sentences with various intervocalic coronal consonants. Results revealed consistent differences in terms of anterior/posterior tongue placement and the amount of linguopalatal contact with the primary distinction between (denti-)alveolar and post-alveolar articulations within the classes of stops/affricates, fricatives, nasals, and laterals/rhotics. Inter-speaker variation was observed, however, in the articulation of some consonants, namely, in the apical or laminal realization of the post-alveolar fricative and in the palatal or palatalized alveolar realization of the post-alveolar nasal. These findings diverge from those reported for Peninsular Spanish [A. M. Fernández Planas, Estudios de fonética experimental, 16, 11–80 (2007)], revealing some dialectal differences in the degree of fronting of denti-alveolars. Additionally, results suggest a sound change in progress in Argentine Spanish, such as the depalatalization of the palatal nasal. [Work supported by Connaught, University of Toronto.]

The organization of bilingual perceptual consonant space: English/Spanish bilingual perception of Malayalam nasal consonants

This study examines the capacity of English/Spanish bilinguals to discriminate between consonants that exist in only one of their respective phonetic inventories. Two non-native nasal consonant contrasts were tested: dental versus alveolar and the palatal versus velar, both found in Malayalam. The dental and palatal nasals appear in Spanish, while the alveolar and velar nasals occur in English. Poorer performance in discrimination was interpreted as indicative of a common nasal category subsuming the Spanish dental and English alveolar nasals; better performance was taken as evidence of the maintenance of separate categories from both languages. Two other tests were administered to aid in the interpretation of the discrimination test scores: forced-choice identification and perceptual similarity ratings. The findings of this research will be used to characterize the perceptual consonant space in terms of continuum between two possible bilingual systems: one that collapses similar categories across languages or one that maintains two distinct phonological systems that can be accessed simultaneously. It is believed that bilinguals will be able to discriminate between these contrasts more consistently than their monolingual peers; however, there is no prediction about performance relative to the monolingual group from Malayalam.

The Sounds of Contemporary French: Articulation and Diversity by Aidan Coveney (review)

226 Reviews on the need for future research into the effectsof the Haitian revolution. One area in particular which is neglected by the strictly historical focus is the cultural influence of the revolution. Nevertheless, this is an impressive, timely collection, one which draws together evidence from France, Britain, Germany, Guadeloupe, Colombia, Cuba, Louisiana, and the eastern seaboard of the United States to suggest the farreaching , multifarious influences ofthe firstsuccessful slave revolt in the New World. University of the West Indies Martin Munro The Sounds of Contemporary French: A rticulation and Diversity. By Aidan Coveney. Exeter: Elm Bank Publications. x + 2i4pp. ?19.99. ISBN 1-902454-02-2. The stated aim of this volume is to 'define a part of what it means to be a native speaker of French' (p. ix). Using labiograms taken from filmed material produced by Bothorel and others at the University of Strasbourg (Andre Bothorel, Pela Si? mon, Francois Wioland, and Jean-Pierre Zerling, Cineradiographie des voyelles et consonnes du francais (Strasbourg: Institut de Phonetique, 1986)), Aidan Coveney offers a detailed articulatory description of the phonemes of French. There are interesting cross-linguistic comparisons, showing how these speech sounds are represented in other languages, and historical light is thrown where appropriate on the development of modern French phonemes, helping to explain their sometimes idiosyncratic real? ization in the orthographic system (see e.g. the discussion of/o/ and /ce/,p. 88). The description of French consonants (Chapter 2) reveals a picture farmore diverse and complex than most accounts suggest. Particularly enlightening here are the ana? lyses of the palatal nasal /ji/,usually assumed rather simplistically to be giving way to \nj\in what Coveney calls supra-local French, and ofthe many variants of/r/ used in differentvarieties of French worldwide. A similarly meticulous description of vowels follows in Chapter 3, which takes up around a third of the book. Here Coveney again addresses issues which are generally ignored in introductory works. Fronting of back vowels, famously reported by Martinet (1958) as C'est jeuli, le Mareuc (reprinted in Andre Martinet, Le Franfais sansfard (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969), pp. 191-208), is subjected to close analysis, and the tongue position of frontrounded vowels relative to their unrounded counterparts?a question overlooked in traditional accounts, which distinguish only the four phonemic vowel heights?is also examined in detail. There is a full and clear overview of lip-rounding in French vowels, and a very interesting description of Canadian vowels at the end of the chapter. While Chapters 2 and 3 describe the sounds in isolation, Chapter 4 considers the effectsof connected-speech processes. Again Coveney discusses a wide range of phenomena in impressive detail, from vowel harmonization to consonant-cluster simplification and assimilation, showing how sociolinguistic factors such as register may play a role. The author intends his work 'primarily for readers in Modern Languages, in the UK and other anglophone countries' (p. ix), but he does not specify at what level, and undergraduates without a prior grounding in phonetics will probably find it dif? ficult. Of all descriptive linguists, writers on phonetics have perhaps the hardest task. However precisely they are presented in articulatory terms, ultimately one needs to hear the sounds described in order to appreciate the differences between them, and Coveney's thorough and well-researched work can hardly be blamed if this reviewer was leftstruggling with his uvular trills and apical taps. A more important criticism, however, given the importance accorded to the Strasbourg data, is that the labiograms are sometimes a little difficultto follow, particularly when multiple lines are used on the same diagram to represent differentsounds. The book is none the less written with admirable clarity,and teachers especially will welcome the frequent comparisons MLRy ioo.i, 2005 227 between French sounds and their English counterparts. Filling a pressing need for a good accessible guide in English to the phonetics of French, this impressive volume is a very welcome contribution. University of Kent David Hornsby Thinking French Translation: A Course in Translation Method. French to English. By Sandor Hervey and Ian Higgins. Second Edition. London and New York: Routledge. 2002. xvi + 287pp. ?65 (pbk ?18.99). ISBN 0-415-25521...

CONTEXT OF LEARNING IN THE ACQUISITION OF SPANISH SECOND LANGUAGE PHONOLOGY

Studies in SLA have debated the importance of context of learning in the process of developing linguistic skills in a second language (L2). The present paper examines whether study abroad, as it provides opportunities for authentic L2 context, facilitates the acquisition of Spanish phonology. The corpus of this investigation is composed of speech samples from 46 students of Spanish: 26 studying abroad in Spain and 20 in a regular classroom environment in the United States. The students read a paragraph with 60 target words including segments such as word-initial stops (i.e., [p t k]),Throughout the article a phonetic representation of all sounds following the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is presented. Phonetic (instead of phonological) representations avoid making assumptions about underlying L2 representations. intervocalic fricatives (i.e., [ ]), word-final laterals (i.e., [l]), and palatal nasals (i.e., ). The findings reveal the following patterns for both regular classroom and study abroad students across time: (a) similar gain in the case of voiced initial stops and word-final laterals, (b) lack of gain in the case of intervocalic fricatives, and (c) high levels of accuracy in the case of the palatal nasal in the pretest. Concerning the external data, the following factor groups predicted phonological gain among all learners: years of formal language instruction, reported use of Spanish before the semester, reported use of Spanish outside the classroom during the semester (days), reported use of Spanish outside the classroom during the semester (hours), gender, entrance Oral Proficiency Interview, exit Oral Proficiency Interview, and level at which formal instruction began.

Nasal palatal: segment complex

This paper focuses on the nature of a segment which is always problematical —the palatal nasal. Phonetic results found in the acoustic, perceptive and articulate spheres, showing the different features of this nasal with regards to others, are the point of departure for a brief reflection on the phonological nature of this segment, taking into account the feature geometry and the articulatory phonology. It concludes by considering the palatal nasal /?/ as a complex segment formed by /n+j/ and the imputation, to temporary effects, of a degree of major o minor assimilation and gestural overlapping during effective perception of /?/, of /n+j/ or of /n+i/.

Notes on the nasal consonants of Yoruba

Taking them one by one, it is generally agreed that [] are the allophones of /w r j/ occurring only before nasal vowels. Ward (1952) noticed the nasalization of these approximants before nasal vowels but was rather confused by their orthographic forms. We have observed that all instances of [ɲ] occur when [j] is followed by a nasal vowel. This non-syllabic palatal nasal is therefore an allophone of /j/ and it is different from the syllabic one which is homorganic with the following consonant. Examples of this non-syllabic [ɲ] can be seen in the following words:

The History of Ai and Ei in French before the Dental, Labial, and Palatal Nasals

In the following pages the history of the pronunciation in French of accented ai and ei before n, m and ń is to be investigated in detail. The subject naturally falls into two divisions. On the one hand we have ai and ei before n or m, and on the other we have the words in which these diphthongs are followed by ń. Both divisions are closely allied and the development of the one is often identical with that of the other. Yet for the better control of the material it will be advisable to separate the history of ain or aim and ein or eim from that of aign and eign.