Perception of vowel nasalization in VC contexts: A cross-language study

Abstract

A series of stimuli ranging between [tΛtΛ], [tΛ̄tΛ], and [tΛntΛ] were synthesized by systematically manipulating (1) the duration of nasalization in the vowel [Λ], (2) the amount of nasalization in the vowel, and (3) the duration of the nasal murmur following the vowel. The stimuli were presented to native speakers of Portuguese, English, and French, which differ with respect to the occurrence of nasal vowels in their phonological systems. The listeners were asked to judge, for each stimulus, (1) the presence or absence of nasalization and (2) the adequacy of the stimulus as a natural utterance with respect to its nasalization. The different language groups gave similar responses with regard to the presence or absence of nasalization. However, judgments of the naturalness of the stimuli in the different languages depend on the temporal characteristics. French listeners preferred a longer duration of nasalization in the vowel and were indifferent to the presence of murmur; English listeners preferred some murmur and accepted briefer nasalization in the vowel; and Portuguese responses were intermediate. Preliminary acoustic data from utterances in the three languages are in accord with these perceptual findings.

Temporal characteristics of nasalization in children and adult speakers of American English and Korean during production of three vowel contexts

“…Nasalization is primarily a͒ characterized by a decrease in the amplitude of the first formant ͑F1͒. Perceptual experiments of synthetic stimuli showed that F1 amplitude lowered by 6 -8 dB is necessary to achieve a significant level of nasality perception ͑House and Stevens, 1956;Stevens et al, 1988͒. The reduced F1 amplitude is associated with an increase in formant bandwidths and upward shifts in formant frequencies.…”

Velopharyngeal function in adult speakers of Portuguese diagnosed with multiple sclerosis

“…It is possible that the nasal and oral sounds identifications may be similar to many languages, but the natural discrimination and judgments appear to differ depending on the spoken language. Indeed, Stevens et al's [33] stated that nasal-ization patterns across Portuguese, French and English speakers are different. These differences appear to be consistent with the acoustic characteristics of nasalization of French, Portuguese and English speakers [12,41].…”

Prenominal bon and bonne in French liaison and enchaînement: An acoustic description

“…Duration: Previous studies in French nasality have indicated that increased vowel duration (V.Dur) can be a quality of oronasal vowels when compared against similar oral vowels. Stevens et al (1987) found duration to be a salient feature in their perception tests. Delvaux et al (2012) found the duration of oronasal vowels in NMF to be even longer than the oronasal vowels in Southern French; both were longer than their oral counterparts.…”