Content uploaded by maria-josep Sole
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by maria-josep Sole on Jan 12, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
Phonetic and Phonological Processes: The Case of Nasalization
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to differentiate between universal phonetic processes and language-specific phonological processes. Cross-linguistic data on coarticulatory nasalization of vowels preceding a nasal consonant were obtained across different speech rates in American English and Spanish. The data show that in American English the temporal extent of vowel nasalization varies with speech rate, whereas in Spanish, nasalization has a constant temporal extent across speech rates. It is argued that the different behavior of nasalization in these two languages reflects different inputs to speech production: In Spanish, vowels followed by a nasal are targeted as oral and nasalization is an unintended vocal tract constraint, whereas, in American English, vowels are targeted as nasalized and vowel nasalization is a phonological effect, intentionally implemented by the speaker. It is suggested that in American English, vowels followed by a tautosyllabic nasal are phonologically specified as nasal as a result of sound change. Data on perceived vowel nasalization in American English are reviewed and shown to be compatible with this proposal.
... La nasalización de las vocales ante una consonante nasal es fruto de la coarticulación producida por el descenso anticipatorio del velo del paladar en la realización de la consonante. Este movimiento y su coordinación con otros gestos articulatorios, así como la intensidad de la nasalización y su duración no se ven alterados, en español, por variaciones en la duración vocálica (Solé, 1992(Solé, , 1995. Esto se ha interpretado como un simple efecto fonético derivado de la coarticulación y no como un rasgo codificado fonológicamente correspondiente a las fases relativas entre gestos articulatorios, como es el caso del inglés, por ejemplo, donde la coarticulación nasal es el resultado de un proceso fonológico. ...
... Por tanto, este estudio emplea el método NAF para analizar la posible diferencia en el grado de coarticulación nasal en contextos del tipo V#NV y VN#V mediante pares mínimos como 'venden aves' frente a 'vende naves'. En cuanto a nuestra hipótesis, según se ha descrito para el español (Solé, 1992(Solé, , 1995, sería posible esperar un mismo grado de nasalización entre un contexto nasal con una consonante tautosilábica en posición de coda VN.V y un contexto con una consonante heterosilábica en posición de ataque V.NV. Esto se justificaría debido a que la coarticulación nasal es el resultado de un proceso pu-ramente fonético cuyo efecto se da de forma localizada en las inmediaciones de la consonante con independencia de la estructura fonológica. ...
... Contrariamente a nuestra hipótesis inicial, concluimos que el grado de nasalización no está condicionado fonológicamente por la estructura prosódica, sino que la coarticulación tiene un origen puramente fonético y se da en las proximidades de la consonante nasal, en la línea de lo descrito por Solé (1992Solé ( , 1995. Tal y como describe Solé en ambos trabajos, la coarticulación nasal en español no se ve afectada por la tasa de habla, sino que se mantiene constante como consecuencia del movimiento articulatorio de descenso del velo y por tanto tiene un carácter puramente fonético. ...
... • Prediction 1: Based on Honikman (1964) and Flege (1995) /Flege and Bohn (2021), it is expected that highly proficient bilinguals will exhibit cross-linguistic adjustability and different categories will emerge for their L1 Spanish and L2 English nasalized vowels in VN sequences. • Prediction 2: Based on Solé (1992), Clumeck (1974), and Beristain (2023a), among others, it is expected that English timing patterns will exhibit greater gestural overlap. This translates to an earlier onset of nasalization and a greater degree of overall nasality in English than in Spanish. ...
... The aerodynamic findings of the current study concur with research on vocalic nasalization by L1 Spanish (Bongiovanni, 2021a;Solé, 1992), L1 English (Solé, 1992) and bilingual speech (Beristain, 2022(Beristain, , 2023aMartínez, 2020). Those studies found that Spanish shows less gestural timing between oral and nasal gestures than English, resulting in less nasal airflow and overall less nasality proportion in nasalized vowels, and that highly proficient bilingual speakers may adapt their native coarticulatory system in their second language by increasing the gestural overlap. ...
... The aerodynamic findings of the current study concur with research on vocalic nasalization by L1 Spanish (Bongiovanni, 2021a;Solé, 1992), L1 English (Solé, 1992) and bilingual speech (Beristain, 2022(Beristain, , 2023aMartínez, 2020). Those studies found that Spanish shows less gestural timing between oral and nasal gestures than English, resulting in less nasal airflow and overall less nasality proportion in nasalized vowels, and that highly proficient bilingual speakers may adapt their native coarticulatory system in their second language by increasing the gestural overlap. ...
Segment-to-segment timing overlap between Vowel-Nasal gestures in /VN/ sequences varies cross-linguistically. However, how bilingual speakers may adjust those timing gestures is still unanswered. Regarding timing strategies in a second language (L2), research finds that native (L1) strategies can be partially transferred to the L2, and that higher L2 proficiency promotes a more successful phonetic performance. My goal is to answer whether highly proficient bilingual speakers can adjust their L1 coarticulatory settings in their L2 and to observe whether their L2 accentedness level plays a role in ultimate attainment. Ten native speakers of Spanish (L1Sp) who were highly proficient L2 English speakers participated in Spanish and English read-aloud tasks. A control group consisting of 16 L1 English speakers undertook the English experiment. Aerodynamic data were collected using pressure transducers. Each participant produced tokens with nasalized vowels in CVN# words and oral vowels in CV(CV)# words. Four linguistically trained judges (two per target language) evaluated a set of pseudo-randomized sentences produced by the participants containing words with nasalized vowels and rated the speech on a 1 (heavily accented) to 9 (native-like) Likert scale. Measurements for onset and degree of overall nasality were obtained. Results indicate the L1Sp group can accommodate gestural timing strategies cross-linguistically as they exhibit an earlier nasality onset and they increment nasality proportion in L2 English in a native-like manner. Additionally, a positive correlation between greater vowel nasality degree and native-like accentedness in the L2 was found, suggesting L2 timing settings might be specified in higher spoken proficiency levels.
... Using a nasograph, 2 Lederer (2000Lederer ( , cited in 2003 probed regional differences by comparing the time-course of nasalization in an [n]-dialect (Peninsular Spanish) and an [ŋ]-dialect (Cuban Spanish). Following Solé (1992), who showed that the onset of nasalization of phonetic/coarticulatory (Peninsular Spanish) and phonologized (American English) nasalization are different, Lederer found that the patterns of anticipatory nasalization in the [ŋ]dialect were more similar to those of English (which exhibits fully nasalized prenasal vowel allophones), than to those of the [n]-dialect. ...
... A 15 % of this difference was established as noise band. Onset of nasalization was operationalized as the first time point at which the nasal energy surpassed the 15 % noise band (Bongiovanni 2021a(Bongiovanni , 2021bDelvaux et al. 2008;Solé 1992). Given that consonantal duration and vowel nasalization values vary as a function of vowel type, stress, and environment (Bongiovanni 2021b;Clumeck 1976;Krakow 1999), prior to running any statistical analyses, averages of duration and onset of nasalization were calculated per speaker, vowel type, environment, and stress conditions. ...
In laboratory studies, speakers often modify their speech (e.g., by hyper-articulating, attempting a “supra-regional” norm, or hypercorrecting) to ‘speak correctly’, especially under the (perceived) expectation of formal speech. A strategy to address this challenge involves comparing performance on one variable against a well-documented pattern on another variable. Previous research in Spanish shows /s/ sensitivity to speech formality, making it a useful comparison for probing other lenition processes. This study uses the acoustics of coda /s/ to predict the acoustics of /n/ and pre-nasal vowels among speakers of Argentine and Dominican Spanish, two dialects in which these have been widely attested. The data analyzed come from 28 speakers of Dominican Spanish and 26 of Argentine Spanish, recorded with a nasometer (a split channel set of microphones that record nose and mouth signals separately). Findings shows pervasive presence of frication for /s/ (whether [s] or [h]), suggesting heightened attention to speech. Additionally, longer /s/ co-occurs with longer nasal consonants. However, when duration of /s/ was compared to the time-course of nasalization, only the Argentine data showed earlier onset of nasalization with shorter /s/. The addition of a well-known sociolinguistic variable can serve as a validity measure for a less understood variable.
... When this type of nasalization occurs in a language whose inventory includes phonological vowel nasality, it potentially threatens the maintenance of phonemic contrasts. In such cases, it has been proposed that speakers may control their coarticulation (e.g., Manuel, 1990; for discussion, see Solé, 1992Solé, , 2007, such that the vowel in VN sequences is only lightly nasalized. ...
... Thus, in mapping the speech signal onto a particular vowel phoneme, Bengali listeners must rely solely on nasality cues, whereas French listeners interpret nasality and quality in tandem (Delvaux, 2009). More broadly, both in the current work and in previous works (e.g., Beddor, Krakow, & Goldstein, 1986;Benguerel & Lafargue, 1981;Carignan, 2014;Delvaux et al., 2008;Delvaux, 2009;Dow, 2020;Krakow et al., 1988;Solé, 1992Solé, , 2007, French provides us with an opportunity to reconsider the characteristics of nasality as a phonological feature, and to highlight its multifaceted nature. ...
The current study examines anticipatory nasal coarticulation in French, a language which is known to exhibit a) quality differences between phonemically oral and nasal vowels and b) relatively low amounts of nasal coarticulation in CVN contexts. In a production study, thirty native Northern Metropolitan (Parisian) French speakers produced seven sets of CṼ-CVC-CVN words (e.g., [sɛd] cède, [sɛn] scènes, [sæ̃] saint). Consistent with previous studies, results indicated quality differences between the vowels in CṼ versus CVC and CVN words, and also that acoustic nasalization in CVN contexts was relatively small; nevertheless, it was still significantly greater than in CVC contexts, and variable across speakers. In a perception study, the CV portions of the production recordings were played to fifty French listeners, who identified the corresponding word in a forced-choice task. Results showed that stimuli from CVN contexts were highly confusable with CVC items, but not with CṼ items. Most importantly, increased degree of acoustic nasalization on individual CVN stimuli significantly correlated with accuracy. We conclude that, despite the overall relative weakness of coarticulatory cues to nasality, French listeners can nevertheless employ these cues when they are stronger.
... Remarkably, the effect of (re)syllabification of nasal consonants on neighboring vowels in Spanish has not been thoroughly investigated, especially via articulatory methods. The present study seeks to understand the aerodynamics (Beristain 2022(Beristain , 2023a(Beristain , 2023bCohn 1993;Huffman and Krakow 1993;Shosted 2009;Shosted et al. 2012;Solé 1992; In this view, resyllabified codas should behave like onsets. Remarkably, weakening phenomena that affect word-internal coda consonants may also affect word-final consonants, even if they are resyllabified as onsets preceding a vowel in the following word. ...
Tautosyllabic segment sequences exhibit greater gestural overlap than heterosyllabic ones. In Spanish, it is presumed that word-final consonants followed by a word-initial vowel undergo resyllabification, and generative phonology assumes that canonical CV.CV# and derived CV.C#V onsets are structurally identical. However, recent studies have not found evidence of this structural similarity in the acoustics. The current goal is to investigate anticipatory and carryover vowel nasalization patterns in tautosyllabic, heterosyllabic, and resyllabified segment sequences in Spanish. Nine native speakers of Peninsular Spanish participated in a read-aloud task. Nasal airflow data were extracted using pressure transducers connected to a vented mask. Each participant produced forty target tokens with CV.CV# (control), CVN# (tautosyllabic), CV.NV# (heterosyllabic), and CV.N#V (resyllabification) structures. Forty timepoints were obtained from each vowel to observe airflow dynamics, resulting in a total of 25,200 datapoints analyzed. Regarding anticipatory vowel nasalization, the CVN# sequence shows an earlier onset of nasalization, while CV.NV# and CV.N#V sequences illustrate parallel patterns among them. Carryover vowel nasalization exhibited greater nasal spreading than anticipatory nasalization, and vowels in CV.NV# and CV.N#V structures showed symmetrical nasalization patterns. These results imply that syllable structure affects nasal gestural overlap and that aerodynamic characteristics of vowels are unaffected across word boundaries.
... Listeners compensate for coarticulatory vowel nasalization often only partially (Beddor & Krakow, 1998;Fowler & Brown, 2000) and in a way that can sometimes be linked to the extent of vowel nasalization in the listener's own speech production Zellou, 2017). There are differences in the extent of coarticulatory vowel nasalization between languages (Beddor & Krakow, 1999;Cohn, 1990;Clumeck, 1976;Solé, 1992), although such differences do not always depend on whether or not vowel nasalization is contrastive (Pouplier et al., 2023). There is also variation in the extent of coarticulatory vowel nasalization between dialects (English: Joo et al., 2019;French: Delvaux et al., 2012;Italo-Romance: Hajek, 1991;Spanish: Bongiovanni, 2021a;Lederer, 2003) affected by social factors (Coetzee et al., 2022;Zellou & Tamminga, 2014). ...
The diachronic change by which coarticulatory nasalization increases in VN (vowel-nasal) sequences has been modelled as an earlier alignment of the velum combined with oral gesture weakening of N. The model was tested by comparing American (USE) and Standard Southern British English (BRE) based on the assumption that this diachronic change is more advanced in USE. Real-time MRI data was collected from 16 USE and 27 BRE adult speakers producing monosyllables with coda /Vn, Vnd, Vnz/. For USE, nasalization was greater in V, less in N, and there was greater tongue tip lenition than for BRE. The dialects showed a similar stability of the velum gesture and a trade-off between vowel nasalization and tongue tip lenition. Velum alignment was not earlier in USE. Instead, a closer approximation of the time of the tongue tip peak velocity towards the tongue tip maximum for USE caused a shift in the acoustic boundary within VN towards N, giving the illusion that the velum gesture has an earlier alignment in USE. It is suggested that coda reduction which targets the tongue tip more than the velum is a principal physiological mechanism responsible for the onset of diachronic vowel nasalization.
... Many empirical studies of speech production have found gradient differences in overall degree and extent of coarticulatory nasality across languages; this is consistent with the view that coarticulatory-based sound change involves cue-reweighting mechanisms rather than categorical changes in the status of vowel nasality. For instance, there are weaker nasal coarticulatory patterns in CVN words in Spanish, French, Swedish, Italian, Japanese and Bininj Kunwok relative to that observed in other languages (Ushijima & Hirose 1974;Clumeck 1976;Cohn 1990;Farnetani 1990;Solé 1992;Delvaux et al. 2008;Stoakes et al. 2020). Meanwhile, US English, Sundanese, and Tereno have extensive coarticulatory vowel nasalization, with the velum lowering gesture starting very early in vowels before the nasal coda (Cohn 1990;Ohala 1993). ...
This study examines apparent-time variation in the use of multiple acoustic cues present on coarticulatorily nasalized vowels in California English. Eighty-nine listeners ranging in age from 18-58 (grouped into 3 apparent-time categories based on year of birth) performed lexical identifications on syllables excised from words with oral and nasal codas from six speakers who produced either minimal (n = 3) or extensive (n = 3) anticipatory nasal coarticulation (realized by greater vowel nasalization, F1 bandwidth, and diphthongization on vowels in CVN contexts). Results showed no differences across listeners' identification for Extensively coarticulated vowels, as well as oral vowels by both types of speakers (all at-ceiling). Yet, performance for the Minimal Coarticulators' nasalized vowels was lowest for the older listener group and increased over apparent-time. Perceptual cue-weighting analyses revealed that older listeners rely more on F1 bandwidth, while younger listeners rely more on acoustic nasality, as coarticulatory cues providing information about lexical identity. Thus, there is evidence for variation in apparent-time in the use of the different coarticulatory cues present on vowels. Younger listeners' cue weighting allows them flexibility to identify lexical items given a range of coarticulatory variation across (here, younger) speakers, while older listeners' cue weighting leads to reduced performance for talkers producing innovative phonetic forms. This study contributes to our understanding of the relationship between multidimensional acoustic features resulting from coarticulation and the perceptual re-weighting of cues that can lead to sound change over time.
... In English, for instance, vowels can be nasalised through anticipatory coarticulation when they are followed by a nasal consonant (sank [sǣNk]). These nasalised vowels always co-occur with a nasal consonant and do not have distinct phonemic representations from their corresponding oral vowels (e.g., [18,19]). Furthermore, L2 learners whose L1 does not exhibit nasal vowels in their phonetic repertoire or whose L1 nasal vowels are articulated differently from French nasal vowels need to learn and coordinate specific aspects. ...
In recent decades, a vast literature has documented crosslinguistic influences on the acquisition of L2 phonology and in particular the effects of spelling on pronunciation. However, articulating these research findings in terms of taking into account the effects of L1 phonology and spelling on L2 pronunciation in language teaching remains to be examined. These studies are based on experimental cross-sectional methods and mainly focus on L2 English learning by speakers of languages with an alphabetic system. In French, there are few studies on crosslinguistic influences on the acquisition of the nasal vowels (/ɑ~/, /ↄ~/ and /ε~/) and few experimental studies that point to a possible effect of orthography on the pronunciation of these phonemes. The results of experimental studies are difficult to transpose to the language classroom because they are based on word or sentence reading and writing activities, which are quite far-removed from the conversational activities practised in the classroom in interaction with peers and the teacher. Hence, we opted here for a case study of the effect of spelling on the production of nasal vowels in interaction tasks. We conducted a longitudinal study during the first year of extensive learning of French (4 hrs 30 per week). The results of a perceptive analysis by expert listeners show that (i) learners spell nasal vowels with an or in 98% of the obligatory contexts; (ii) most nasal vowels are perceived as nasal vowels in speech (72%), the others being perceived as vowels followed by a nasal consonant (19, 5%) or as oral vowels (8.5%); (iii) consonantisation is stronger when the learner spontaneously produces a word than when (s)he repeats it, (iv) which decreases with time (learning effect) and varies (v) according to the consonant, /ε~/ being less consonantised than /ↄ~/ and /ɑ~/. Finaly, we propose a didactic discussion in the light of intelligibility and influence of orthography.
... 2 In Spanish, the velum gesture does not seem to be directly coupled with V1, as suggested by data on nasalization. According to the studies conducted by Solé (1992Solé ( , 1995, the temporal extent of nasalization remains fairly constant and does not vary proportionally with changes in vowel duration. Solé argues that nasalization in Spanish is simply a consequence of phonetic mechanisms and not of a phonologically specified relation between the vowel and the velum gesture. ...
Word-final consonants in Spanish are post-lexically resyllabified when followed by an onsetless syllable, e.g. venden aves ('they sell birds') is traditionally syllabified as ven.de.na.ves and is considered homopho-nous with vende naves ('he sells ships'). This study analyzes such two-word minimal pairs inserted in prosodically equivalent sentences read from a list and provides measurements of the acoustic duration of resyllabified /s/, /n/, and /l/, and of their flanking vowels. A mixed-model analysis showed that, when resyllabified as derived onsets, all three consonants pattern together and show a shorter duration (venden aves) in comparison with canonical onsets (vende naves). This is consistent with the coda position that they occupy in the lexical representation, given the weak nature of codas. However, vowel duration varies according to consonant identity. These results are discussed in terms of the articulatory gestures making up the target consonants and allow to interpret that the resyllabified consonant actually becomes the onset of the following syllable. Therefore, we offer converging evidence of resyllabified consonants acting both as codas and onsets, and consequently we propose they can be analyzed as ambisyllabic.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Vowel nasality is a distinctive feature in American English in cases such as camp, hint, and bunk, as compared, respectively, with cap, hit, and buck. This is demonstrated by the results of a number of experiments with synthetic speech and magnetic tape, by data obtained from spectrograms and kymograms, and by the descriptive analysis of pertinent utterances by American speakers. A general rule for the distribution of this phenomenon is given in the conclusion.