The present study examines the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of two types of consonantal sequences involving nasals and plosives: ‘(non-nasal) plosive + nasal’ (involving ‘nasal plosion’) and ‘nasal + plosive’. The nasal plosion data were recorded from two speakers of North American English (e.g., hidden [hɪdn]) and three speakers of the Fukui dialect of Japanese (e.g., [mi tnta] ‘has already seen’): the coordination of oral and nasal closure/aperture observed with real-time MRI is similar between the two languages. The data for ‘nasal + plosive’ sequences were from ‘denasalized’ pronunciations of nasals from two speakers of Chaozhou Chinese (e.g., [mbik] ‘honey’): the results for all speakers reveal similar events of articulation (simultaneous oral/velar closure and velar opening) for both nasal plosion and denasalization, but in the opposite order. However, the velar opening for nasal plosion is more abrupt and larger in volume, resulting in a long and loud nasal resonance. The opening is very small and brief in time for the denasalization cases, resulting in relatively weak nasality. The results indicate asymmetry in how oral and naso-pharyngeal articulations are organized in the two types of consonantal sequences, reflecting their different metrical status – syllabic vs. onset.
Cite as: Yoshida, K., Utsugi, A., Wu, J.H., Nitta, T., Sakamoto, K., Ichimura, Y. (2020) Articulatory asymmetry in consonantal sequences: A case from English, Fukui Japanese and Chaozhou Chinese.. Proc. Speech Prosody 2020, 21-25, doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-5
@inproceedings{yoshida20_speechprosody,
author={Kenji Yoshida and Akira Utsugi and Jia Hui Wu and Tetsuo Nitta and Kiyoe Sakamoto and Yoko Ichimura},
title={{Articulatory asymmetry in consonantal sequences: A case from English, Fukui Japanese and Chaozhou Chinese.}},
year=2020,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2020},
pages={21--25},
doi={10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-5}
}