fbpx
Wikipedia

Nasal vowel

January 19, 2024

A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ (ⓘ) or Amoy [ɛ̃]. By contrast, oral vowels are produced without nasalization.

Nasal
◌̃
IPA Number424
Encoding
Entity (decimal)̃
Unicode (hex)U+0303

Nasalized vowels are vowels under the influence of neighbouring sounds. For instance, the [æ] of the word hand is affected by the following nasal consonant. In most languages, vowels adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum in a natural process of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal, but few speakers would notice. That is the case in English: vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels, and all vowels are considered phonemically oral.

The nasality of nasal vowels, however, is a distinctive feature of certain languages. In other words, a language may contrast oral vowels and nasalized vowels phonemically.[1] Linguists make use of minimal pairs to decide whether or not the nasality is of linguistic importance. In French, for instance, nasal vowels are distinct from oral vowels, and words can differ by the vowel quality. The words beau /bo/ "beautiful" and bon /bɔ̃/ "good" are a minimal pair that contrasts primarily the vowel nasalization even if the /ɔ̃/ from bon is slightly more open.

Portuguese allows nasal diphthongs, which contrast with their oral counterparts, like the pair mau /ˈmaw/ "bad" and mão /ˈmɐ̃w̃/ "hand".

Although there are French loanwords into English with nasal vowels like croissant [ˈkɹwɑːsɒ̃], there is no expectation that an English-speaker would nasalize the vowels to the same extent as French-speakers or Portuguese-speakers. Likewise, pronunciation keys in English dictionaries do not always indicate nasalization of French or Portuguese loanwords.

Influence on vowel height edit

Nasalization as a result of the assimilation of a nasal consonant tends to cause a raising of vowel height; phonemically distinctive nasalization tends to lower the vowel.[2] According to a different assessment, high vowels do tend to be lowered, but low vowels tend to be raised instead.[3]

In most languages, vowels of all heights are nasalized indiscriminately, but preference occurs in some languages, such as for high vowels in Chamorro and low vowels in Thai.[4]

Degree of nasalization edit

A few languages, such as Palantla Chinantec,[5] contrast lightly nasalized and heavily nasalized vowels. They may be contrasted in print by doubling the IPA diacritic for nasalization: ⟨ẽ⟩ vs ⟨ẽ̃⟩. Bickford & Floyd (2006) combine the tilde with the ogonek: ⟨ẽ⟩ vs ⟨ę̃⟩. (The ogonek is sometimes used in an otherwise IPA transcription to avoid conflict with tone diacritics above the vowels.)

Origin edit

Rodney Sampson described a three-stage historical account, explaining the origin of nasal vowels in modern French. The notation of Terry and Webb will be used below, where V, N, and Ṽ (with a tilde above) represent oral vowel, nasal consonant, and nasal vowel, respectively.[6]

Historical development of French nasal vowels
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3
c. 13th c. 14th–16th c. 17th–18th
vend [vẽnt], [vɑ̃nt] [vɑ̃(n)t] [vɑ̃]

In the Old French period, vowels become nasalized under the regressive assimilation, as VN > ṼN. In the Middle French period, the realization of the nasal consonant became variable, as VN > Ṽ(N). As the language evolves into its modern form, the consonant is no longer realized, as ṼN > Ṽ.

Orthography edit

Languages written with Latin script may indicate nasal vowels by a trailing silent n or m, as is the case in French, Portuguese, Lombard (central classic orthography), Bamana, Breton, and Yoruba.

In other cases, they are indicated by diacritics. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, nasal vowels are denoted by a tilde over the symbol for the vowel. The same practice can be found in Portuguese marking with a tilde in diphthongs (e.g. põe) and for words ending in /ɐ̃/ (e.g. manhã, irmã). While the tilde is also used for this purpose in Paraguayan Guaraní, phonemic nasality is indicated by a diaeresis ( ¨ ) in the standardized orthographies of most varieties of Tupí-Guaraní spoken in Bolivia. Polish, Navajo, and Elfdalian use a hook under the letter, called an ogonek, as in ą, ę. The Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanization of Taiwanese Hokkien and Amoy uses a superscript n (aⁿ, eⁿ, ...).

The Brahmic scripts used for most Indic languages mark nasalization with the anusvāra (◌ं), homophonically used for homorganic nasalization in a consonant cluster following the vowel) or the anunāsika (◌ँ) diacritic (and its regional variants).

Nasalization in Nastaliq-based Arabic scripts of languages in Pakistan, such as Punjabi, Saraiki and Urdu etc., is indicated by placing the nasal vowel, a dotless form of the Arabic letter nūn (ن) or the letter marked with the maghnūna diacritic: respectively ں (always occurring word finally) or ن٘, called "nūn ghunna".

Nasalized vowels occur in Classical Arabic but not in contemporary speech or Modern Standard Arabic. There is no orthographic way to denote the nasalization, but it is systematically taught as part of the essential rules of tajwid, used to read the Qur'an. Nasalization occurs in recitation, usually when a final nūn is followed by a yāʾ (ي).[citation needed]

Languages edit

The following languages use phonemic nasal vowels:

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Crystal, David. (2008). Nasal. In A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (6th ed., pp. 320–321). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
  2. ^ Beddor, P. S. 1983. Phonological and phonetic effects of nasalization on vowel height
  3. ^ Carignan, Christopher et al. 2010. Lingual response to vowel nasalization. Conference on Phonetic Universals, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, October 2010
  4. ^ Hajek, John. (2013). Vowel Nasalization. In M. Dryer & M. Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Retrieved 30 March 2019 from [1]
  5. ^ Blevins, Juliette. (2004). Evolutionary Phonology: The Emergence of Sound Patterns (p. 203). Cambridge University Press.
  6. ^ Terry, Kristen Kennedy & Webb, Eric Russell. (2011). Modeling the emergence of a typological anomaly: Vowel nasalization in French. In Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 37(1), 155–169.
  7. ^ Morrison, Donald Alasdair (2021). "Vowel nasalisation in Scottish Gaelic: No evidence for incomplete neutralisation in initial mutation". Morphology. 31 (2): 121–146. doi:10.1007/s11525-020-09347-5. S2CID 213501945.

Further reading edit

  • de Medeiros, Beatriz Raposo. (2011). Nasal Coda and Vowel Nasality in Brazilian Portuguese. In S. M. Alvord (Ed.), Selected Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Romance Phonology (pp. 33–45).
  • Hajek, John & Maeda, Shinji. (2000). Investigating Universals of Sound Change: the Effect of Vowel Height and Duration on the Development of Distinctive Nasalization. Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and the lexicon (pp. 52–69).
  • Jeong, Sunwoo. (2012). Directional asymmetry in nasalization: Aperceptual account. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology, 18(3), 437–469.
  • Michaud, A., Jacques, G., & Rankin, R. L. (2012). Historical transfer of nasality between consonantal onset and vowel: from C to V or from V to C? Diachronica, 29(2), 201–230.
  • Sampson, Rodney. (1999). Nasal Vowel Evolution in Romance. Oxford University Press.

January 19, 2024
nasal, vowel, this, article, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, improve, this, article, adding, citations, reliable, sources, unsourced, material, challenged, removed, find, sources, news, newspapers, books, scholar, jstor, october, 2021. This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Nasal vowel news newspapers books scholar JSTOR October 2021 Learn how and when to remove this template message A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate or velum so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously as in the French vowel ɑ or Amoy ɛ By contrast oral vowels are produced without nasalization Nasal IPA Number424EncodingEntity decimal amp 771 Unicode hex U 0303Nasalized vowels are vowels under the influence of neighbouring sounds For instance the ae of the word hand is affected by the following nasal consonant In most languages vowels adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum in a natural process of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal but few speakers would notice That is the case in English vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels and all vowels are considered phonemically oral The nasality of nasal vowels however is a distinctive feature of certain languages In other words a language may contrast oral vowels and nasalized vowels phonemically 1 Linguists make use of minimal pairs to decide whether or not the nasality is of linguistic importance In French for instance nasal vowels are distinct from oral vowels and words can differ by the vowel quality The words beau bo beautiful and bon bɔ good are a minimal pair that contrasts primarily the vowel nasalization even if the ɔ from bon is slightly more open Portuguese allows nasal diphthongs which contrast with their oral counterparts like the pair mau ˈmaw bad and mao ˈmɐ w hand Although there are French loanwords into English with nasal vowels like croissant ˈkɹwɑːsɒ there is no expectation that an English speaker would nasalize the vowels to the same extent as French speakers or Portuguese speakers Likewise pronunciation keys in English dictionaries do not always indicate nasalization of French or Portuguese loanwords Contents 1 Influence on vowel height 2 Degree of nasalization 3 Origin 4 Orthography 5 Languages 6 See also 7 References 8 Further readingInfluence on vowel height editNasalization as a result of the assimilation of a nasal consonant tends to cause a raising of vowel height phonemically distinctive nasalization tends to lower the vowel 2 According to a different assessment high vowels do tend to be lowered but low vowels tend to be raised instead 3 In most languages vowels of all heights are nasalized indiscriminately but preference occurs in some languages such as for high vowels in Chamorro and low vowels in Thai 4 Degree of nasalization editA few languages such as Palantla Chinantec 5 contrast lightly nasalized and heavily nasalized vowels They may be contrasted in print by doubling the IPA diacritic for nasalization ẽ vs ẽ Bickford amp Floyd 2006 combine the tilde with the ogonek ẽ vs e The ogonek is sometimes used in an otherwise IPA transcription to avoid conflict with tone diacritics above the vowels Origin editRodney Sampson described a three stage historical account explaining the origin of nasal vowels in modern French The notation of Terry and Webb will be used below where V N and Ṽ with a tilde above represent oral vowel nasal consonant and nasal vowel respectively 6 Historical development of French nasal vowels Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3c 13th c 14th 16th c 17th 18thvend vẽnt vɑ nt vɑ n t vɑ In the Old French period vowels become nasalized under the regressive assimilation as VN gt ṼN In the Middle French period the realization of the nasal consonant became variable as VN gt Ṽ N As the language evolves into its modern form the consonant is no longer realized as ṼN gt Ṽ Orthography editLanguages written with Latin script may indicate nasal vowels by a trailing silent n or m as is the case in French Portuguese Lombard central classic orthography Bamana Breton and Yoruba In other cases they are indicated by diacritics In the International Phonetic Alphabet nasal vowels are denoted by a tilde over the symbol for the vowel The same practice can be found in Portuguese marking with a tilde in diphthongs e g poe and for words ending in ɐ e g manha irma While the tilde is also used for this purpose in Paraguayan Guarani phonemic nasality is indicated by a diaeresis in the standardized orthographies of most varieties of Tupi Guarani spoken in Bolivia Polish Navajo and Elfdalian use a hook under the letter called an ogonek as in a e The Pe h ōe ji romanization of Taiwanese Hokkien and Amoy uses a superscript n aⁿ eⁿ The Brahmic scripts used for most Indic languages mark nasalization with the anusvara homophonically used for homorganic nasalization in a consonant cluster following the vowel or the anunasika diacritic and its regional variants Nasalization in Nastaliq based Arabic scripts of languages in Pakistan such as Punjabi Saraiki and Urdu etc is indicated by placing the nasal vowel a dotless form of the Arabic letter nun ن or the letter marked with the maghnuna diacritic respectively ں always occurring word finally or ن called nun ghunna Nasalized vowels occur in Classical Arabic but not in contemporary speech or Modern Standard Arabic There is no orthographic way to denote the nasalization but it is systematically taught as part of the essential rules of tajwid used to read the Qur an Nasalization occurs in recitation usually when a final nun is followed by a yaʾ ي citation needed Languages editThe following languages use phonemic nasal vowels Abenaki Acehnese see Acehnese phonology Albanian Gheg dialect Assamese Balochi Breton Bengali nasalization is weak in Indian Bengali and mostly absent in Bangladeshi Bengali Burmese Cherokee Choctaw Dutch French loanwords for some speakers Dutch Low Saxon Elfdalian Franco Provencal see Franco Provencal phonology French see French phonology German French loanwords for some speakers some speakers of the Bavarian dialect Gbe languages Guarani Gujarati Haitian Creole Hindustani Hmong Hokkien Jamaican Maroon Creole Kashubian Konkani Lakota Latin Lombard Louisiana Creole Kouri Vini Malay Kelantan Pattani Terengganu and Pahang dialects Marathi only old Marathi but not the contemporary language see Marathi phonology Maxakali Mirandese Mohawk Munda languages Navajo Nepali Nheengatu Occitan Old Church Slavonic Old Norse Oriya Paici an unusually large number of nasal vowels Polish according to older sources more recent sources present the vowel system without nasal vowel phonemes see Polish phonology Portuguese Punjabi Scottish Gaelic 7 Seneca Taiwanese Tamil modern Colloquial Tamil only Literary Tamil uses oral vowel plus nasal stop sequences instead Telugu Wu including Shanghainese Xavante language Some Central Plains Mandarin dialects such as Qinlong Mandarin and Guanzhonese Jin Chinese Jilu Mandarin Jiaoliao Mandarin Xiang Chinese Yeli Dnye an unusually large number of nasal vowels Yoruba Mande languages Surinamese Creoles Sranan Tongo Ndyuka language Saramaccan language Krio language Basilectal Western Caribbean creole languages Jamaican Patois Belize Kriol San Andres y Providencia Creole See also editNasalization Vowel front vowel back vowelReferences edit Crystal David 2008 Nasal In A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics 6th ed pp 320 321 Malden MA Blackwell Publishing Beddor P S 1983 Phonological and phonetic effects of nasalization on vowel height Carignan Christopher et al 2010 Lingual response to vowel nasalization Conference on Phonetic Universals Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig Germany October 2010 Hajek John 2013 Vowel Nasalization In M Dryer amp M Haspelmath eds The World Atlas of Language Structures Online Retrieved 30 March 2019 from 1 Blevins Juliette 2004 Evolutionary Phonology The Emergence of Sound Patterns p 203 Cambridge University Press Terry Kristen Kennedy amp Webb Eric Russell 2011 Modeling the emergence of a typological anomaly Vowel nasalization in French In Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 37 1 155 169 Morrison Donald Alasdair 2021 Vowel nasalisation in Scottish Gaelic No evidence for incomplete neutralisation in initial mutation Morphology 31 2 121 146 doi 10 1007 s11525 020 09347 5 S2CID 213501945 Further reading editde Medeiros Beatriz Raposo 2011 Nasal Coda and Vowel Nasality in Brazilian Portuguese In S M Alvord Ed Selected Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Romance Phonology pp 33 45 Hajek John amp Maeda Shinji 2000 Investigating Universals of Sound Change the Effect of Vowel Height and Duration on the Development of Distinctive Nasalization Papers in Laboratory Phonology V Acquisition and the lexicon pp 52 69 Jeong Sunwoo 2012 Directional asymmetry in nasalization Aperceptual account Studies in Phonetics Phonology and Morphology 18 3 437 469 Michaud A Jacques G amp Rankin R L 2012 Historical transfer of nasality between consonantal onset and vowel from C to V or from V to C Diachronica 29 2 201 230 Sampson Rodney 1999 Nasal Vowel Evolution in Romance Oxford University Press Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Nasal vowel amp oldid 1192795694, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.