Phonetic and Phonological Processes: The Case of Nasalization

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to differentiate between universal phonetic processes and language-specific phonological processes. Cross-linguistic data on coarticulatory nasalization of vowels preceding a nasal consonant were obtained across different speech rates in American English and Spanish. The data show that in American English the temporal extent of vowel nasalization varies with speech rate, whereas in Spanish, nasalization has a constant temporal extent across speech rates. It is argued that the different behavior of nasalization in these two languages reflects different inputs to speech production: In Spanish, vowels followed by a nasal are targeted as oral and nasalization is an unintended vocal tract constraint, whereas, in American English, vowels are targeted as nasalized and vowel nasalization is a phonological effect, intentionally implemented by the speaker. It is suggested that in American English, vowels followed by a tautosyllabic nasal are phonologically specified as nasal as a result of sound change. Data on perceived vowel nasalization in American English are reviewed and shown to be compatible with this proposal.

Production and perception of clear speech in Croatian and English

“…While these rate, style, and focus modifications differ from the conversational-to-clear speech transformation in that they are typically elicited in the laboratory with no explicit instruction to enhance intelligibility (and these studies usually do not include corresponding measures of intelligibility), they are similar to clear speech in that they involve a change from a relatively hypoarticulation style to a relatively hyperarticulation style (Lindblom, 1990). Solé (1992Solé ( , 1995 found that in Spanish, vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized for approximately the same amount of time in an absolute sense across slow, normal, and fast speaking rates. In contrast, English vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized for approximately the same proportion of their total duration (virtually 100% of the vowel duration) across speaking rates.…”

A comparison of vocal parameters in adult bilingual Hebrew-English speakers

“…While this perceptual change was not noted in spontaneous speech, it is possible that, within automatic speaking tasks, such as counting, the presence of certain vocal quality characteristics is more easily perceived than in spontaneous speaking tasks in which the speaker may use compensatory vocal measures that can mask those characteristics. Previous research has found similar results in which different speaking tasks yielded different perceptual voice quality results (22,26,27) . While further studies in perceptual vocal quality differences between languages are needed to clarify the understanding of linguistic impact on vocal characteristics, it can be suggested that differing vocal mechanism behaviors that were found to be influenced by language in this study (e.g.…”

Excrescent stops in American English

“…As domain-final lengthening targets the phonological structure of the coda, increasing excrescence length at the boundaries of larger prosodic domains is in support of a phonological epenthesis analysis. An epenthetic segment should be syllabified into the coda which is targeted for final lengthening, whereas articulatory overlap should not be, as the duration of gesture does not affect articulatory overlap (Solé, 1992(Solé, , 1995. Therefore, unchanged excrescence length at different boundary sizes is in support of an articulatory overlap analysis, as articulatory overlap should be invisible to a phonological process targeting codas.…”

“…The boundary between phonetics and phonology is often blurred, but some work has been teasing the two apart based on crosslinguistic patterns. Comparing phonological vowel nasalization in American English and allophonic nasalization in Spanish, Solé (1992Solé ( , 1995 found that speech rate affected both differently. Phonological nasalization remained on a proportional amount of the vowel at different speech rates, whereas in Spanish it remained on the same duration of the vowel, as an articulatory overlap.…”