Abstract:

Previous research has shown that, in English /VNC/ sequences, vowels and nasal consonants are shorter when the final oral consonant is voiceless than when voiced [O. Fujimura, Symp. on Articulatory Modeling, Grenoble (1977)]. This study investigates whether consonant voicing affects the temporal characteristics of coarticulatory vowel nasalization, as well as V and N duration. Specifically, is vowel nasalization proportionately longer in voiceless contexts, compensating for the shorter N? Speech materials are multiple instances of real-word and nonsense /bVNC/ sequences (V=/i I e (cursive beta) (ae ligature)/, N=/m n (right hooked en)/, C=/p t k s/ and /b d g z/) produced by four American English speakers. Temporal measures include duration of V, N, C and vowel nasalization. Onset of vowel nasalization was identified as onset of the nasal formant and/or widening of formant bandwidth in the low-frequency region of FFT spectra sampled across the vowel in 10-ms increments. Vowel duration was on average 20% shorter and N duration 40% shorter in voiceless than in voiced contexts. However, vowel nasalization duration was not compensatorily longer in voiceless contexts. Regardless of N duration, coarticulatory nasalization remained a constant proportion (about 80%) of total vowel duration across all segmental contexts. Variation in this proportion across vowels and speakers is minor. [Work supported by NSF.]