Cover not available
Part of
Romance Linguistics 2012: Selected papers from the 42nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Cedar City, Utah, 20-22 April 2012
Edited by Jason Smith and Tabea Ihsane
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 7] 2015
► pp. 63–76

Nasal vowels are not [+NASAL] oral vowels

The assumption of minimal articulatory difference between members of nasal–oral vowel pairs deserves greater scrutiny. This study tests the hypothesis that members of nasal–oral vowel pairs share a common vocal tract configuration. Electromagnetic articulography is used to study the vertical position of the tongue and the labial aperture of nasal–oral vowel pairs produced by four speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Significant differences were found for each vowel pair for at least one speaker, though considerable inter-speaker variation was evident. The most robust differences were tongue-body raising during the nasal vowels /ã/ and /ũ/. Because heavy nasalization tends to raise the perceived quality of low vowels, the lingual raising of /ã/ probably reinforces its nasality and contributes to the description of this vowel as [ɐ]. Because nasalization tends to lower the perceived quality of high vowels, the nasality of /ũ/ may be counteracted by the lingual raising gesture.

Published online: 28 August 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.7.05sho
References
Arai, Takayuki
2005 “Comparing Tongue Positions of Vowels in Oral and Nasal Contexts”. Proceedings of INTERSPEECH-2005, 1033–1036.Google Scholar
Baayen, R.H., D.J. Davidson & D.M. Bates
2008 “Mixed-effects Modeling with Crossed Random Effects for Subjects and Items”. Journal of Memory and Language 59.390–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbosa, Plínio A. & Eleonora C. Albano
2004 “Brazilian Portuguese”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34.227–232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beddor, Patrice Speeter
1983 Phonological and Phonetic Effects of Nasalization on Vowel Height. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Bothorel, André, Péla Simon, François Wioland & Jean-Pierre Zerling
1986 “Cinéradiographie des voyelles et consonnes du français”. Travaux de l’Institut de Phonétique de Strasbourg 18.Google Scholar
Carignan, Christopher, Ryan Shosted, Chilin Shih & Panying Rong
2011 “Compensatory articulation in American English nasalized vowels”. Journal of Phonetics 39.668–682. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carignan, Christopher
2011 “Oral Articulation of Nasal Vowels in French”. Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences XVII ed. by Wai-Sum Lee & Eric Zee, 408–411. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
2013 When nasal is more than nasal: The oral articulation of nasal vowels in two dialects of French. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar
2014 “An acoustic and articulatory examination of the ‘oral’ in ‘nasal’: The oral articulations of French nasal vowels are not arbitrary”. Journal of Phonetics, 46.23–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carignan, Christopher, Ryan Shosted, Maojing Fu, Zhi-Pei Liang & Bradley Sutton
2015 “A real-time MRI investigation of the role of lingual and pharyngeal articulation in the production of the nasal vowel system of French”. Journal of Phonetics 50.34-51. 
 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chiba, Tsutomu & Masato Kajiyama
1941 The Vowel: Its Nature and Structure. Tokyo: Tokyo-Kaiseikan.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle
1968 The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Cohn, Abigail C
1990 Phonetic and Phonological Rules of Nasalization. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Diehl, R.L., K.R. Kluender & M.A. Walsh
1990 “Some Auditory Bases of Speech Perception and Production”. Advances in Speech, Hearing and Language Processing ed. by W.A. Ainsworth, 243–268. London: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Dixit, R.P., F. Bell-Berti & K.S. Harris
1987 “Palatoglossus Activity During Nasal/Nonnasal Vowels of Hindi”. Phonetica 44.210–226. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engwall, Olov, Véronique Delvaux & Thierry Metens
2006 “Interspeaker variation in the articulation of nasal vowels”. Proceedings of the 7th International Seminar on Speech Production ed. by H. Yehia, D. Demolin & R. Laboissière, 3–10. Ubatuba, São Paulo: Centro de Estudos da Fala, Acústica, Linguagem e Música.Google Scholar
Escudero, Paola, Paul Boersma, Andreia Rauber & Ricardo Bion
2009 “A Cross-Dialect Acoustic Description of Vowels: Brazilian and European Portuguese”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 126.1379–1393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fant, Gunnar
1960 Acoustic Theory of Speech Production. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Fujimura, Osamu & Jan Lindqvist
1971 “Sweep-tone Measurements of Vocal-tract Characteristics”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49.541–558. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hajek, John
2011 “Vowel Nasalization”. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online ed. by Mathew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath, chp. 10. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online at [URL]. Accessed on 08/25/12.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Sarah & Kenneth N. Stevens
1985 “Acoustic and Perceptual Correlates of the Non-nasal-Nasal Distinction for Vowels”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 77.1560–1575. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hebb, Donald Olding
1949 The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Hoole, Philip, Andreas Zierdt & Christian Geng
2007 “Beyond 2-D in Articulatory Data Acquisition and Analysis”. Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences ed. by J. Trouvain & W.J. Barry, 265–268. Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.Google Scholar
Hughes, O.M. & J.H. Abbs
1976 “Labial-mandibular Coordination in the Production of Speech: Implications for the Operation of Motor Equivalence”. Phonetica 33.199–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística
2010 “Dados do Censo 2010 publicados no Diário Oficial da União do dia 04/11/2010: Dados de Minas Gerais”. Downloaded September 2 2012 from [URL].
Ladefoged, Peter
1993 A Course in Phonetics. 3rd Edition. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace and Company.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn
1986 “Phonetic Universals in Vowel Systems”. Experimental Phonology, ed. by John J. Ohala & Jeri J. Jaeger, 13–44. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Maddieson, Ian
2007 “Areal distribution of nasalized vowels”. Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences ed. by Jürgen Trouvain & William J. Barry, 1381–1384. Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.Google Scholar
Maeda, Shinji
1993 “Acoustics of Vowel Nasalization and Articulatory Shifts in French Nasal Vowels”. Nasals, Nasalization, and the Velum ed. by Marie K. Huffman & Rena A. Krakow, 147–170. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matta Machado, Miriam da
1993 “Fenômenos de nasalização vocálica em português: Estudo cineradiográfico”. Cadernos de Estudos Lingüísticos 25.113–127.Google Scholar
Maddieson, Ian
2011 “Vowel Quality Inventories”. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online ed. by Mathew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath, ch. 2, Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online at [URL]. Accessed on 08/25/2012.Google Scholar
Ohala, John J
1981 “The Listener as a Source of Sound Change”. Papers from the Parasession on Language and Behavior ed. by Carrie S. Masek, Roberta A. Hendrick & Mary F. Miller, 178–203. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Oliveira, Catarina, Paula Martins, Samuel Silva & António Teixeira
2012 “An MRI Study of the Oral Articulation of European Portuguese Nasal Vowels”. INTERSPEECH-2012, 2690–2693 .
Pruthi, Tarun, Carol Y. Epsy-Wilson & Brad H. Story
2007 “Simulation and Analysis of Nasalized Vowels Based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 121. 3858–3873. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rong, Panying & David Kuehn
2012 “The effect of articulatory adjustment on reducing hypernasality”. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 55.1438–1448. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Rodney
1999 Nasal Vowel Evolution in Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shosted, Ryan
2006 “Vowel context as a condition for nasal coda emergence: Aerodynamic evidence”. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36.39–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 “Excrescent nasal codas in Brazilian Portuguese: An electropalatographic study”. Proceedings of the XVIIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences ed. by Wai-Sum Lee & Eric Zee, 1834–1837. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.Google Scholar
Shosted, Ryan, Christopher Carignan & Panying Rong
2012 “Managing the distinctiveness of phonemic nasal vowels: Articulatory evidence from Hindi”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131.455–465. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Straka, Georges
1955 “Remarques sur les voyelles nasales, leur origine et leur évolution en français”. Revue de Linguistique Romane 19.245–274.Google Scholar
Wright, J.T
1986 “The behavior of nasalized vowels in perceptual vowel space”. Experimental Phonology, ed. by John J. Ohala & Jeri J. Jaeger, 45–67. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Yunusova, Yana, Jordan R. Green & Antje Mefferd
2009 “Accuracy Assessment for AG500, Electromagnetic Articulograph”. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 52.547–555. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zerling, Jean-Pierre
1984 “Phénoménes de nasalité et de nasalisation vocaliques: étude cinéradiographique pour deux locuteurs”. Travaux de l’Institut de Phonétique de Strasbourg 16.241–266.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Carignan, Christopher
2017. Covariation of nasalization, tongue height, and breathiness in the realization of F1 of Southern French nasal vowels. Journal of Phonetics 63 ► pp. 87 ff. DOI logo
Carignan, Christopher
2019. A network-modeling approach to investigating individual differences in articulatory-to-acoustic relationship strategies. Speech Communication 108 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Carignan, Christopher, Ryan K. Shosted, Maojing Fu, Zhi-Pei Liang & Bradley P. Sutton
2015. A real-time MRI investigation of the role of lingual and pharyngeal articulation in the production of the nasal vowel system of French. Journal of Phonetics 50 ► pp. 34 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.