Nasals Flashcards
Examples of nasels?
In english, the nasals are /mnŋ/. Other languages have other nasals including the velar nasal /N/ in Japanese.
In punjabi , they use the retroflex nasal for example for old [pʊraːɳaː]
How are they produced?
Produced with a closure of the oral cavity and sound energy is released through nasal cavity whilst the velum is lowered.
Even though the oral cavity is closed it acts as a resonating chamber for the sound waves. Therefore, changes in the oral cavity distinguish between the nasal sounds.
All of the nasals in english are voiced. However, voiceless nasals are used in the ‘mmm’ when expressing thoughtfulness.
How is nasal murmur an acoustic feature of nasals?
The mix of the velopharyngeal opening and oral obstruction, causes nasal murmur. This is this associated exclusively with nasal sounds.
kurowski and Blumstein (1984) demonstrated that the nasal murmur and the transitions are roughly equal in providing perceptual information on the place of articulation.
How is amplitude an acoustic feature of nasals?
The formants are weak because the airflow is impeded by the narrow opening into the nasal cavity- this leads to a reduced amplitude.
The murmur is similar to the vowel in having a number of spectral peaks but only one of these, the low frequency nasal formant, has an amplitude comparable to that of vowel formants. All the other peaks are reduced in amplitude in the nasal murmur which means that they will overall have less energy.
What frequency is the nasal murmer limited to?
region below about 300Hz.
What are the formant patterns of nasels?
Low first formant because the total cavity of all branches (pharyngeal nasal and oral - is longer than that for oral sound- this low F1 sometimes referred to as nasal formant.
How are nasal formants similar to vowels?
Spectrograms of nasals illustrate that the nasal are associated with distinct regions of energy similar to the formant patterns of sustained vowels (monopthongs).
What did Fijimura (1962) find regarding nasals?
the first formant at about 300Hz that is well separated from other formats. This is because the total cavity length of all branches (pharyngeal, nasal and oral) is longer than that for oral sounds. This low f1 is sometimes referred to as a nasal formant.
What are antiformants?
an area of reduced energy
how are nasals associated with antiformants?
Those resonant frequencies in the nasal that are close to the resonances of the oral cavity are absorbed or canceled and “subtracted” from the overall spectrum because part of the acoustic energy of the pulsating airflow from the larynx causes resonance in the oral cavity.
What are the anti-formats for the different nasals [m] [n] and [ŋ]?
low-frequency range for bilabial [m] (750-1,250 Hz), in the mid-frequency range for alveolar [n] (1,450-2,200 Hz), and in the high-frequency range for velar [ŋ] (above 3,000 Hz)
What are the bandwidths like for nasals?
increased due to the absorptions of sound energy by the walls of the nasal and oral cavity. The bandwidths are damped.
The F1 in adjacent vowels is weakened.
