Languages & Linguistics
Nasal Sound
Nasal sound refers to a type of speech sound produced by allowing air to escape through the nose while the mouth is closed. This results in a distinctive resonance and quality to the sound. In phonetics, nasal sounds are typically represented by specific symbols and are found in various languages around the world.
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7 Key excerpts on "Nasal Sound"
eBook - PDF- Martin J. Ball, Nicole Muller(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Finally, if the vel urn is lowered and the mouth is open, then the air will flow through both the oral cavity (where articulation occurs) and the nasal cavity simultaneously. The first type of sound is termed oral, the second nasal, and the third nasalized. Examples of oral sounds in English are lp, d, z, S, I, wl and all the vowels. The Nasal Sounds of English are [m, n, 1]). English does have sounds that are nasalized (for example, vowels before any of the nasal consonants), but these are only positional variants of oral vowels. A language such as French has nasalized sounds that occur irrespective of position, for example, the nasalized vowels in words like en, un, on, vin [0, &, 5, vel. As can be seen in these examples, nasalized sounds are transcribed with a small curved line (a tilde) above the main symboL It should be noted that, although nasalized vowels are relatively common in the languages of the world as distinctive sounds, nasalized consonants can also occur. Figure 4.9 shows articulations with oral airflow (a), nasal airflow Cb), and both oral and nasal airflow Cc). We were concerned in the preceding discussion with types of individual sounds that are either oral, nasal, or nasalized. However, this topic also has implications for voice quality. For example, if for some reason (such as a cleft palate) a speaker is unable to shut off airflow into the nasal cavity, his or her speech is going to be characterized by excessive nasal resonance (in other words, sound segments are always going to be nasal or nasalized, and oral sounds will not be possible). Such a voice quality is termed hypernasal. On the other hand, if the PHONATION AND VOICE QUALITY 47 (a) (c) FIG 4.9. «1) Oral, (0) nasal, and (C) nasalized articulations. (a)
eBook - PDF- Kuniya Nasukawa(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
These studies adopt different theoretical approaches and, in some cases, prove somewhat lacking in terms of descriptive precision for the purposes of phonological analysis. To solve this problem, Cohn (1993b) summarises all major works investigating nasal phenomena and provides a large number of acccessible references to various studies of nasals in natural languages. 14 Typological aspects of nasality and voicing According to the literature on the typology of nasality (Trubetzkoy 1939; Hockett 1955; Ferguson 1963; Greenberg 1966, 1978; Ladefoged 1971; Crothers 1978; Maddieson 1984 and Cohn 1993b), this property is contrastive both in vowels and consonants. This fact entails the existence of four types of speech sound — 'oral vowels', 'nasal vowels', 'oral con-sonants' and 'nasal consonants' — in natural languages. Focusing on 'na-sal vowels' and 'nasal consonants', and classifing natural languages in terms of the presence/absence of these two types, languages in the world may be divided into the following four systems: (16) Typology of nasal systems Type Nasal consonant Nasal vowel I Quileute II Coast Salishan • III Most languages IV Yoruba The data presented by Hocket, Nartey and Maddieson tell us that type I is fairly rare and only a small number of languages (eight in Nartey's sample: e.g. Quileute, Rotokas and Apinaye) belong to this system. However, every language in type I contains voiced oral consonants which, historically, used to have nasal cognates. Some dialect systems like Rotakas display nasal characteristics in voiced oral plosives, which are generally regarded as dialectal surface variants (Herbert 1986). Languages corresponding to type II are equally rare (Coast Salishan: Hockett 1955, Cohn 1993b). In com-parison, the majority of the world's languages belong to type III, exhibiting nasal consonants but no nasal vowels. Type IV is uncommon, although observable in Yoruba and Nupe, which show both nasal consonants and nasal vowels.
eBook - PDFIn honor of Ilse Lehiste
Ilse Lehiste Pühendusteos
- Robert Channon, Linda Shockey, Robert Channon, Linda Shockey(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Some Acoustical and Perceptual Correlates of Nasal Vowels Kenneth N. Stevens, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Masschusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA., U.S.A. Gunnar Fant, Department of Speech Communication and Music Acoustics, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Sarah Hawkins, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT., U.S.A. 1. INTRODUCTION Acoustic coupling to the nasal cavity during the production of vowels occurs in speech under several conditions. First, there are situations, due either to anatomical or functional problems, in which the nasal and oral cavities are permanently coupled. Depending on the degree of coupling, this condition will hinder or prevent the build-up of oral pressure necessary to produce obstruent consonants, and will add a nasal quality to vowels. Secondly, in many languages vowels adjacent to nasal consonants may be nasalized. The permissible degree of this coarticulated nasality varies between languages and dialects. Thirdly, some languages distinguish phonemically between nasal and nonnasal vowels. These languages include French, Portuguese, and Gujarati. Although these facts are well known, they have not been incorporated into an acoustical theory for vowels, and the basic perceptual correlates of nasali-zation are little understood. Distinctive feature theory, for example, includes the feature [± nasal], but we do not have a clear definition of this term, except that the velum must be lowered to some extent. One question is whether there is a single acoustic-perceptual correlate of nasality for all vowels, or perhaps a complex of cues whose combined effect could be taken as the feature [+ nasal]. This paper reports some initial work on an investigation of (1) a theoretical basis for the spectral characteristics of nasalization and (2) the cues for the perception of the nasal/nonnasal distinction in a language for which this distinction is phonemic.
eBook - ePub- Martin J. Ball, Nicole Muller(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Fig. 6.2 ). So no air pressure builds up, and there is no plosion. However, even though airflow is through the nasal cavity, the constellation of articulators in the oral cavity is still important. Because the oral and nasal cavities are linked via the pharynx and the velopharyngeal port, the sound quality of the nasal stop is made up of all the resonances imparted to the airflow as it passes through all these cavities. This can be heard if we hum a long, prolonged [m] sound and compare that with an [n] sound. They differ. This difference can only come from the effect of the altered size of the oral cavity: [m] has a larger oral cavity than [n], because for [m] the closure is at the lips, whereas for [n] it is between the tongue tip and the alveolar ridge.FIG 6.2. Nasal stop production (solid line: passive articulator; dotted line: active articulator; arrows: airflow).When we make nasal stops, we tend to lower the velum a little in advance of the beginning of the stop itself (i.e., the closure of the articulators). This results in any sound coming before the nasal stop becoming somewhat nasalized. If you listen closely to the [i] vowel in the word “seed” and compare it with the same vowel in the word “seen,” you should be able to hear the somewhat nasalized quality of the latter. At the end of the nasal stop, there may also be an amount of nasalization on the following sound, as it takes a certain amount of time to raise the velum again. This does not appear to be so strong, however, and phoneticians generally consider that anticipatory coarticulation (as they call it) is stronger than persevatory coarticulation (see also discussion of coarticulation in chap. 9 ).In the languages of the world, nasal stops are very common (though there are a few languages that lack them, including Rotokas—an Indo-Pacific language). However, in the overwhelming majority of languages, only voiced nasal stops are found. This is probably because voiceless nasals are not very loud, and those languages that have them may well add voicing toward the end of the sound in order to add to the sound's salience. Some southeast Asian languages, such as Burmese, have voiceless nasals.
- F.C. Stork, J.D.A. Widdowson(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
A lateral sound is produced by allowing the air to pass around one or both sides of an obstruction along the centre line of the oral cavity. In the articulation of [l] the apex of the tongue meeting the alveolar ridge prevents the air from escaping along the central line and forces it to pass around the sides or latera of the tongue. Some languages have DENTAL sounds rather than alveolar. In English the stop consonants [t] and [d] are produced with the apex of the tongue on the alveolar ridge, but in Russian, for example, the apex of the tongue is behind the top teeth and the sounds [ ] and [ ] occur. English has fricative sounds [θ] and [ð] which are produced with the tongue coming into contact with the teeth. Since both the top and the bottom teeth may be involved in the articulation of these sounds, they are often referred to as INTERDENTAL FRICATIVES. The top teeth and the lips come together to form LABIODENTAL sounds. English has the voiced and voiceless fricatives [v] and [f] in this position. BILABIAL sounds are produced by the interaction of both lips. English has only voiced and voiceless stops [b] and [p] in this position, but some languages have fricatives. Spanish, for example, has a voiced bilabial fricative [β]. After passing the lips the air has reached the outside world via the oral cavity, but there is an alternative route. If the velum is lowered to allow air to escape via the nose, NASAL consonants will result instead of the ORAL consonants described above. In the case of a nasal consonant air escapes only through the nose and the airway is blocked completely at some point in the oral cavity. Bilabial [m], alveolar [n], velar [η] occur in English but in some other languages labiodental, dental, palatal, retroflex and uvular nasal consonants also occur
eBook - PDFIntroducing Linguistics
Theoretical and Applied Approaches
- Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, John W. Schwieter(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Nasals Nasals are different from other consonants because the airflow comes out of the nasal cavity rather than the oral cavity. Nasals are stops, however, since there is full obstruc- tion at a certain point in the vocal tract, even if the air is expelled through the nasal cavity. English has three nasal phones at bilabial, alveolar, and velar places of articulation (see Table 2.4). The bilabial and alveolar nasals can occur at the beginning, in the mid- dle, and also at the end of words in English. The velar nasal [ŋ] appears at the end of words or syllables as the symbol for the final sound in the word singing or sing. There are no words or syllables that begin with [ŋ] in English. The palatal nasal occurs in Spanish words such as año [aɲo] “year” and French words such as agneau [aɲo] “lamb”. Trills and Taps/Flaps TABLE 2.5 Trills Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal ʙ r ʀ TABLE 2.6 Taps (Flaps) Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Post-alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal ѵ ɾ ɽ PAUSE AND REFLECT 2.7 i) What is the phonetic context for the alveolar tap [ɾ] in North American English (neighboring sounds, relationship to stress)? ii) Listen to a news broadcast from England and note the pronunciation of the phones [t] and [d] in the words where Canadians and Americans produce the flap [ɾ]. What do you notice? iii) Listen to a news broadcast from Australia and New Zealand. What version of [t] and [d] do these speakers produce? 41 2.4 Transcribing Consonants and Vowels Trills are made by holding the active articulator tense (whether the lips, or tongue tip, or uvula) and then exhaling strongly to make the active articulator and the passive artic- ulator vibrate. The bilabial trill [ʙ] is similar to what we associate with the “raspberry” sound and is very rare as a linguistic sound across the world’s languages (see Table 2.5).
eBook - ePubRelevant Acoustic Phonetics of L2 English
Focus on Intelligibility
- Ettien Koffi(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
Vowel nasalization in nasal contexts is very widespread. The phonetic transcriptions of L2 Englishes provided by the SAA website shows that the L2 speakers do not have any problem nasalizing their vowels. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996:102, 104) explain that some languages nasalize vowels more heavily than others. This means that a larger quantity of air flows through the nostrils than through the oral cavity. French and Portuguese are often mentioned as two languages that nasalize vowels very heavily. 37 Consonant nasalization occurs to a lesser extent in English Odgen (2009:128) transcribes as [ɪ̃n̪ɣːə pɑːk] to show that [ð] is sometimes nasalized. MA 89M and MN 143M nasalize [ð] in in the phrase as [n̪]. Many speakers pronounce the in , the first in , and the last in as [n]. So, becomes [wɪñ n̪ ɚ], is heard as [ɪñ n̪ əɹɛtɪŋ̃ ], and is produced as [tʰwɛñ n̪ i]. 7.11.4 Excursus 4: Nasal Releases in the Coda When the alveolar nasal [n] appears in syllable codas, it is articulated as a separate syllable. Ladefoged and Johnson (2015:67, 71) refer to this pronunciation as “nasal plosion.” Ogden (2009:111-112) calls it “nasal release.” This pronunciation is heard when [n] immediately follows the alveolar stops [t] and [d]. Ladefoged and Johnson transcribe , , narrowly as [sædn], [sAdn], [ə] to exemplify this pronunciation. They contend that it is a mark of foreign accent if [a] is inserted between [d] and [n]. A nasal release is also heard in many pronunciations of the suffix <-ion> if the final consonant to which the suffix is added is either [ʃ] or [ʒ], as in the and . A similar pronunciation is heard often when the derivational suffix <-ism> is added to stems
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