Oropharygneal articulation of phonemic and phonetic nasalization in Brazilian Portuguese

In this study, real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rt-MRI) is used to study vocal tract configuration in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), a language that arguably has [+nasal] (phonemically nasal) vowels and two classes of [−nasal] vowels (oral and phonetically nasalized). Results show oropharyngeal differences between nasal and oral vowel congeners /a∼ã/, /i∼ĩ/ and /u∼ũ/, which arguably enhance well-known acoustic effects of nasal coupling on vowel height. In addition, nasal coda consonants emerge following nasal vowels. Phonetically nasalized vowels, on the other hand, show no sign of nasal enhancement, including nasal coda emergence, implying they are underlyingly oral vowels, despite the environment in which they occur. We argue that nasal vowels in BP are underlyingly /Ṽ/, rather than /VN/ sequences, the latter distinction being reserved for nasalized vowels. Articulatory divergence of [+nasal] and [−nasal] vowels has implications in perception, sound change, and the phonetic implementation of nasality.
Source: Journal of Phonetics - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research