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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
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three 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

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