Patterns of vowel nasality in Brazilian Portuguese
This study aims to establish differences in patterns of acoustic nasality between nasal and nasalized vowels in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) The difference in how nasality is implemented in the acoustic signal is hypothesized to reflect the different phonological status of these two vowel categories. Acoustic nasality is the difference between the amplitude of the first formant (A1) and the amplitude of a harmonic in the low region of the vowel spectrum (P0) (Chen, 1997) The smaller the difference between these peaks, the more nasal a vowel is. A1 P0 measurements were taken at different time points from recordings of oral, nasal, and nasalized vowels in BP of five qualities. Results show that nasal and nasalized vowels were similar in all qualities. However, the way nasality is implemented over time between the vowel categories are different, with acoustic nasality in nasal vowels increasing more rapidly than in the nasalized counterparts. Although the patterns of nasality found are not consistent with the expected nasal profile difference (Cohn, 1990) the difference in acoustic nasality between nasal and nasalized vowels is consistent enough to consider it result of how the feature [nasal] is implemented in the language due to its variable phonological status in BP. This study aims to establish differences in patterns of acoustic nasality between nasal and nasalized vowels in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) The difference in how nasality is implemented in the acoustic signal is hypothesized to reflect the different phonological status of these two vowel categories. Acoustic nasality is the difference between the amplitude of the first formant (A1) and the amplitude of a harmonic in the low region of the vowel spectrum (P0) (Chen, 1997) The smaller the difference between these peaks, the more nasal a vowel is. A1 P0 measurements were taken at different time points from recordings of oral, nasal, and nasalized vowels in BP of five qualities. Results show that nasal and nasalized vowels were similar in all qualities. However, the way nasality is implemented over time between the vowel categories are different, with acoustic nasality in nasal vowels increasing more rapidly than in the nasalized counterparts. Although the patterns of nasality found are not consistent with the.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America