Nasal Epenthesis in Hindi

Abstract

Modern Hindi words such as [dãt] ‘tooth’ and [t ∫ãnd] ‘moon’ had similar phonetic structure in Middle Indo-Aryan, with conventional transliterations of danta and čanda, respectively. The development of the long nasal vowel is usually correlated with loss of the nasal consonant. If so, why does one form still contain a nasal consonant? We argue that a sequence of nasalized vowel + voiced stop (but not voiceless stop) can, for phonetic reasons, engender an epenthetic nasal, and we demonstrate that the same process can be found (nondistinctively) in present-day Hindi and French in the junction between a word-final nasal vowel and a following word-initital voiced stop. A nondistinctive epenthetic nasal can become a ‘full’ or ‘lexical’ nasal when listeners reinterpret this transitional event as purposeful or intended.

The perception of voice-initiating gestures

“…This was because voiceless tokens clustered around the low end of the range, whereas voiced tokens clustered around the high end. This trend is in agreement with reports in the literature (e.g., Ohala and Ohala 1991) indicating that in N-stop sequences velic closure is completed earlier before voiceless than voiced stops (presumably due to the lower tolerance of voiceless stops to velum leakage, which bleeds the oral pressure required for a noisy release burst). We chose to include the naturally observed values (e.g., maximum nasal leak values for voiced and voiceless stops rather than intermediate values for voiced stops and maximum values for voiceless stops) in order to create a large effect that allowed listeners to detect velum leak, and to simulate naturally occurring conditions.…”

“…Using a variety of techniques, evidence for nasal leak (and thus open velum) during voiced but not voiceless stops has been found in German (Muselhold 1913;Pape et al 2006, acoustic data), American English (Yanagihara and Hyde 1966, nasal flow data;Rothenberg 1968;Kent and Moll 1969, cinefluorography), Hindi and Telugu breathy voiced stops (Rothenberg 1968), and Sindhi voiced stops (Nihalani 1975). (See further references in Ohala and Ohala 1991). 1 In addition, greater velopharyngeal closure force has been found for voiceless than voiced stops (Kuehn and Moon 1998), suggesting that the velic valve is finely controlled as a function of stop voicing.…”

A Coarticulatory Path to Sound Change

“…Early onset of the velum gesture in prevoiceless position can be attributed to a combination of auditory and aerodynamic factors. Voiceless obstruents have highintensity noise cues, and the pressure buildup needed for these cues is not compatible with a lowered velum, likely leading speakers to resist velic leakage to retain the voiceless percept (Ohala & Ohala 1991. In contrast, voicing is facilitated by nasal leakage until complete velum closure is achieved; it is facilitated as well as by continued raising of the velum after closure, which expands the oral cavity (Hayes & Stivers 2000, Solé 2007).…”

“…More recently,Ohala and Ohala (1991) have argued that Old Hindi had Ṽ C voiced and N was subsequently reintroduced before voiced stops. At the same time, the reintroduction in only voiced contexts points to the influence of voicing on Ṽ N patterns.…”

Language context elicits native-like stop voicing in early bilinguals’ productions in both L1 and L2

“…There is evidence from other languages that voiced stops, but not voiceless stops, may have nasal onsets (J. J. Ohala & M. Ohala, 1993), and that the presence of the epenthetic nasal sets the stage for sound change, that is, listeners may reinterpret the phonetically predictable event as a distinctive phonological event (M. Ohala & J. J. Ohala, 1991).…”