This paper argues that the articulatory-acoustic stability of phonological features may be affected by concurrent and coarticulatory nasality. We examine the stability of fricatives when they combine with nasality within a segment and when they come in contact with nasality in adjacent segments with varying degrees of coarticulatory overlap.
This paper argues that the articulatory-acoustic stability of phonological features may be affected by concurrent and coarticulatory nasality. We examine the stability of fricatives when they combine with nasality within a segment and when they come in contact with nasality in adjacent segments with varying degrees of coarticulatory overlap.
This paper argues that the articulatory-acoustic stability of phonological features may be affected by concurrent and coarticulatory nasality. We examine the stability of fricatives when they combine with nasality within a segment and when they come in contact with nasality in adjacent segments with varying degrees of coarticulatory overlap.
Abstract This paper argues that the articulatory-acoustic stability of phonological features may be affected not only by concurrent features, but also by features in adjacent segments which may coincide in time due to coarticulatory overlap. Specifically, the paper illustrates how frication may be endangered by concurrent and coarticulatory nasality. We review aerodynamic and acoustic evidence showing that fricatives tend to be impaired and become unstable with co-occurring nasalization. Then we examine the stability of fricatives when they come in contact with nasality in adjacent segments. An experiment is described where aerodynamic and acoustic data were obtained for fricative + nasal sequences at slow and fast rates. The results show that anticipatory velophrayngeal opening during the acoustic duration of the fricative vents the high oral pressure required for audible frication, thus providing support for the claim that the same physical principles disfavoring the combination of frication and nasality within a segment are at play when these features combine across segments. It is argued that the instability of frication when combined with nasalization may be at the origin of a number of phonological patterns.
1. Introduction It is known that the articulatory-acoustic stability of phonological features may be endangered by their combination with other features within segments. In this paper we suggest that the stability of features may be affected not only by concurrent features, but also by features in adjacent segments which may coincide in time due to coarticulatory overlap. Specifically, we examine the stability of fricatives when they combine with nasality within a segment and when they come in contact with nasality in adjacent segments with varying degrees of coarticulatory overlap. In this paper we focus on the phonetic grounding of the combination of features within a segment and across segments, and the implications for
* Work supported by grants HUM2005-02746, BFF2003-09453-C02-C01 from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Spain, and by the research group 2005SGR864 of the Catalan Government. The insightful suggestions and comments of Daniel Recasens and an anonymous reviewer are gratefully acknowledged. MARIA-JOSEP SOL 42 phonological patterns. Much work is available on the physical, physiological and auditory principles that account for the combination of features within a segment, and characterize feature co-occurrence restrictions, phonological universals (i.e. why some feature combinations are universally preferred) and system gaps (i.e. why certain feature combinations do not occur) (e.g. Ohala 1983; Sol 2002a; Westbury & Keating 1986). How speech features affect each other across segments is at the origin of restrictions on the sequencing of sounds, the likelihood that segments follow one another, and feature spreading or blocking in consonant/vowel harmony. The interaction between features in contiguous segments, however, does not end there. Sound change and phonological processes may also result from the way in which features combine across segments. After all, segments change in certain segmental contexts, due to interaction with features in neighbouring segments, but not in others. Work on how features combine across segments has thus far focused on perceptual and physiological constraints. For example, Kawasaki (1986, 1992) addressed the perceptual discriminability of sound combinations. Coarticulation theories have explored the contextual restrictions on the temporal extension and magnitude of nasality, labiality, laryngeal and lingual gestures for consonants and vowels (e.g. Hardcastle & Hewlett 1999; Huffman & Krakow 1993). In contrast, the role of aerodynamic factors in the combination of features across segments has been little addressed (but see Ohala 1981, 1997a; Sol 2002b). Furthermore, not much emphasis has been placed on the relationship between how features combine across segments and how they influence each other when they co-occur within a segment. This paper goes beyond previous work in suggesting that aerodynamic factors may be at the origin of the incompatibility of features and phonological patterning. In addition, it is suggested that the physical and physiological principles that account for the paradigmatic arrangement of features can also explain their syntagmatic arrangement. We will explore how the stability of features may be endangered by their combination with other features within segments and by features in contiguous segments due to coarticulatory effects. We hypothesize that the physical and physiological constraints which are at work within a segment will also play a role in the combination of features across segments. If this is the case, it follows that features that do not combine well within a segment, due to physical and physiological constraints, are not likely to combine in adjacent segments since the same constraints will apply when the two features overlap in time. Before addressing our hypothesis we need to consider the theoretical framework underlying the stability of features. According to Stevens (1972, 1989) quantal theory, gradual and continuous articulatory movements and aerodynamic variation may have a categorical acoustic-auditory result; that is, some variations along the continuum involve abrupt acoustic changes whereas certain others do not. Features that are used in speech are those that fall in stable regions in the acoustic/auditory space to allow for articulatory, contextual, rate and prosodic variation while preserving a robust acoustic THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
43 result. The quantal nature of speech has been illustrated by varying features in isolation along the articulatory (or acoustic) dimension and observing the acoustic/auditory result of such variations (e.g. laryngeal adduction and presence of voicing; movement of the velum and percept of nasalization). The range of allowable articulatory/aerodynamic variation within which the percept of the feature is not affected will define the stability of the articulatory-acoustic correlation. Elaborating on this view, we may consider that this stable range may vary, i.e. may be expanded, reduced, or shifted, with co-occurring features in the same segment and, as claimed in this paper, in adjacent segments. Combinations of features which result in tightly constrained articulatory or aerodynamic requirements are unstable because they allow a narrow range of variation, that is, they may easily fall into a different category with small variations in the articulatory/aerodynamic parameters. Such unstable combinations may easily change into a different percept and will tend to be disfavoured (as shown, for example, by gaps in segment inventories, and a lower lexical frequency of certain segment types). A classic example is the difficulty in maintaining the co-occurrence of voicing and obstruency. The partial or full blockage of the air exiting the oral cavity for obstruents leads to a rapid increase of oropharyngeal air pressurerequired to generate turbulence for fricatives and to create an audible burst for stopsbut tends to impair the transglottal flow required for voicing within a few tens of milliseconds. Unless the obstruent constriction is kept very short or the oral cavity is enlarged to accommodate more air and thus prolong voicingboth maneuvers to the detriment of a high pressure build-up for obstruencyvoiced obstruents will tend to devoice. Thus, voiced obstruents require very finely tuned aerodynamic conditions in order to maintain voicing and obstruency (Ohala 1983). Similarly, combinations of features which result in a poor acoustic signal, for example voiceless nasals (as the low frequency amplitude modulation for nasals is impaired by voicelessness), are auditorily unstable (as measured from confusion studies) and will tend not to be used. In order to describe the interactions between features it is necessary to vary the parametersphysiological, aerodynamic or acousticthat characterize such features not only singly but in combination (e.g. changes in oral pressure and duration of the obstruent constriction in the first example (Westbury & Keating 1986), or changes in glottal excitation for nasals and non-nasals, or during different degrees of velopharyngeal opening for the nasal, in the second example). We can then identify a set of categorial values along these parameters which remain stable with variations in the other parameters. These categories or optimal settings across the different parameters, if wide enough in range, are the more likely combinations of features into segments. The claim made in this paper is that the physical and auditory principles that account for how features interact within segments may also account for the interaction of features in contiguous segments. It is known that when two MARIA-JOSEP SOL 44 segments are in contact their articulations necessarily overlap. Variations in the shape, position and temporal coordination of the articulators due to coarticulation with neighbouring segments may cause modifications of the articulatory trajectories or the aerodynamic conditions in the vocal tract that can, in turn, affect the acoustic and auditory result. Thus, the execution of the articulatory gestures in implementing a particular feature will vary considerably with the features in contiguous segments. As described earlier, voicing is difficult to maintain during an obstruent; however, if an obstruent is preceded by a nasal, voicing during the obstruent is facilitated. In nasal + obstruent sequences, voicing continuation into the obstruent is facilitated by nasal leakage before full velic closure is achieved and, after velic closure, by the velum continuing to rise toward the high position for obstruents, thus expanding the volume of the oral cavity. Both mechanisms, nasal leakage and oral cavity expansion, lower the oropharyngeal pressure which accumulates in the oral cavity and thus prolong transglottal flow for voicing (Hayes & Stivers 1996). Such phonetic effects have phonological significance in languages with a phonological post-nasal voicing rule, in phonotactic patterns, and in sound change. Thus, aerodynamic principles in the maintenance of voicing within segments may account for the extension (or cessation) of voicing when segments are combined. In order to test the hypothesis that the factors governing the interaction between features in the same sound may also govern the interaction of features across segments when they overlap due to coarticulation, we designed a series of experiments to explore the impact of co-occurring and coarticulatory velopharyngeal opening for nasality on the stability of segments requiring a high pressure build-up in the oral cavity, such as fricatives. The results may throw light on why some feature combinations fail to occur, e.g. nasal fricatives, and why certain segment combinations, e.g. fricatives followed by nasals, tend to change. We report on research in which the aerodynamic conditions in these segment types were varied (1) by venting the oral pressure with a pseudo-velopharyngeal valve, and (2) by increasing speaking rate and thus articulatory overlap of velopharyngeal opening on the pressure build-up for the fricative. The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 we review the aerodynamic and perceptual effects of combining frication and nasalization within a segment. In Section 3 we address the conflicting requirements of frication and nasalization when they occur in contiguous segments and we review how fricatives tend to lose their friction preceding nasals historically and synchronically. In Section 4 we provide aerodynamic and acoustic evidence that in fricative + nasal sequences anticipatory velum lowering during the acoustic duration of the fricative reduces or extinguishes the pressure difference required for frication. In Sections 5 and 6 we argue that the principles that explain why the features [nasal] and [fricative] do not combine within a segment also explain why they do not combine across segments. THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
45 2. Co-occurring features: Nasality and frication Languages of the world have nasal stops, nasal taps, nasal approximants, nasal glides and nasal vowels but no nasal fricatives (Ohala 1975; Ohala & Ohala 1993). Segments reported as nasalized fricatives (e.g. in Umbundu (Schadeberg 1982), Coatzospan Mixtec (Gerfen 1999), and Waffa (Stringer & Hotz 1973)) are more adequately described as frictionless continuants due to the lack of high frequency aperiodic noise (Ohala & Ohala 1993; Ohala, Sol & Ying 1998). The reported nasalized fricatives in Bantu languages, Kwa languages, and Igbo appear to involve sequencing of the nasal and the fricative configuration and are, in fact, better described as prenasalized fricatives (Welmers 1973:70-73). Formal phonology attributes the lack of nasal fricatives to antagonistic constraints: The rarity of such segments [nasalized liquids, glides and fricatives] can be attributed to an antagonistic constraint NAS/CONT: A nasal must not be continuant (Pulleyblank 1997:76); or to a constraint hierarchy ranking segments according to their incompatibility with nasalization: *NASOBSTRUENTSTOP >> *NASFRICATIVE >> *NASLIQUID >> *NASGLIDE >> *NASVOWEL, where the less compatible a segment is with nasality, the higher-ranked its constraint (Walker 2000). The phonetic grounding for such antagonistic constraints or constraint hierarchy is provided by work by Ohala and coworkers. Ohala and Ohala (1993) provide an explanation based on aerodynamic principles. They suggest that obstruents require a build-up of oral pressure behind the constriction in order to create audible turbulence. An open velopharyngeal port for nasality would vent the airflow through the nasal cavity, thus reducing or eliminating the required pressure difference across the oral constriction for frication. Ohala, Sol and Ying (1998) further explored this explanation by examining the aerodynamic and acoustic effect on fricatives of concurrent nasality and its perceptual result. They vented oro-pharyngeal pressure (P o ) with a pseudo- velopharyngeal valve (i.e. catheters of varying cross-sectional areas: 7.9, 17.8, 31.7, and 49.5 mm 2 ; all 25 cm long, inserted into the mouth via the buccal sulcus and the gap behind the back molars), and quantified how much velopharyngeal opening for nasality was allowed before frication would be extinguished. The results of Ohala et al. (1998) show that in producing a fricative there can be some opening of the velic valve, but the impedance of this valve has to be high relative to that in the oral constriction so that the air will escape through the aperture with lower impedance and create friction at the oral constriction. Thus venting fricatives with catheters with a higher impedance (7.9 mm 2 -area catheter) than that at the oral constriction did not affect the quality of the fricative, it just slightly attenuated the fricative noise. Catheters with values for impedance similar (17.8 mm 2 area) to those at the oral constriction had noticeable effects on fricatives: they lost much of their high- frequency aperiodic energy (e.g. the spectral peak at 6 kHz for [s] disappeared and the energy level dropped 20 dB). The effect was most dramatic for voiced MARIA-JOSEP SOL 46 fricatives, which became frictionless continuants. Sibilant fricatives sounded non-sibilant. Larger area catheters (31.7 mm 2 ), with a lower impedance than that in the vocal tract, extinguished frication, since airflow exited through the aperture with lower impedance, thus reducing the required pressure drop across the oral constriction to generate turbulence. Voiceless fricatives only retained the glottal friction. Voiced fricatives were more seriously affected than voiceless fricatives, becoming vowel-like. The results show that if impedance at the velopharyngeal port is lower than that at the oral constriction the air will escape through the nose (i.e. the fricative will be nasalized), but supraglottal frication will be impaired. Velic openings which do not impair frication (<17.8 mm 2 ) would be insufficient to create the percept of nasalization in the fricative or even adjacent vowels. A greater coupling between the oral and the nasal cavity is required for vowels and sonorants to be perceived as nasalized. Data by other investigators suggest that a velo-pharyngeal opening of 36 mm 2 (Whalen & Beddor 1989), 40 mm 2
(Maeda 1993) or more is needed to create a robust percept of nasalization in vowels 1 . Consequently, if impedance at the velopharyngeal port is high enough not to affect the fricative quality, the fricative will not sound nasalized. In summary, to the extent that a fricative is a good fricative perceptually, it cannot be nasalized (without added biomechanical cost, e.g. increased subglottal pressure). In other words, along the independent physical parameters of frication and nasalization there are categorial values which show stable perceptual properties, i.e. a certain range within the continuum where a reliable identification of frication (or nasalization), say 80%, can be obtained. The solid line in Figure 1 illustrates that, for a sufficient rate of flow across the oral constriction, a stable percept of a fricative can be obtained with some velopharyngeal opening, but if the velic opening is larger than approximately 18 mm 2 , as shown by Ohala et al. (1998), the resulting sound will not be heard as having friction. The dashed line shows that the same sound will not be heard as nasalized unless the velic opening is at least 40 mm 2 , as found by Whalen and Beddor (1989), and Maeda (1993). The two ranges of reliability for frication and nasality, however, do not overlap, i.e. there is not a range of values for both frication and nasalization where we may get 80% identification for both features. Shosted (2006) obtained similar results to those of Ohala et al. (1998) with a mechanical model of the vocal tract with which he generated fricatives with different degrees of velopharyngeal opening. He found that nasalization on fricatives reduced the intensity of friction and increased the bandwidth of spectral peaks, thus changing the percept of fricatives. The difficulty in achieving a stable percept of concurrent nasalization and frication has been
1 Hajek and Watson (1998) found that a velopharyngeal opening of 16.8 mm 2 was sufficient to give a strong nasal percept in vowels. Even with such a small magnitude of velum opening our argument still holds. In Figure 1, right panel, the identification curve would shift towards lower values (i.e. 80% identification of a nasalized segment would be obtained at approximately 20 mm 2 ), but the two curves would still not overlap. THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
47 noted by other investigators. For example, research on a variety of languages has shown that nasalized voiced fricatives produced with perceptible nasalization tend to lose audible frication and become approximants (e.g. in Guarani, Gregores & Suarez 1967). In contrast, nasalized voiceless fricatives with audible frication do not differ much auditorily from non-nasalized fricatives, that is, the acoustic cues for nasalization are hardly detectable (Cohn 1993; Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:132).
Figure 1: Diagrammatic representation of the reported percentage of identification of a fricative and a nasal for continuous variation in velic opening for a given flow rate. See text.
In the next section we address whether the weakening or loss of fricatives before nasals can be explained by the same principles.
3. Contiguous frication and nasality Related to the difficulty of combining velopharyngeal opening with frication within a segment is the precise timing of gestures in nasal + fricative and fricative + nasal sequences if both segments are to be preserved. The antagonistic requirements of turbulence generation (i.e. a tightly closed velum to allow turbulent airflow in the vocal tract) and nasal coupling (i.e. a lowered velum) in contiguous fricatives and nasals severely constrain the timing of velic movements. The relative synchronization of articulatory movements in nasal + fricative sequences has been investigated by Ali, Daniloff and Hammarberg (1979), Ohala and Bus (1995), Ohala (1997b) and Bus (in press) amongst others. Historically, such sequences may result in (i) nasal consonant loss, with associated nasalization and lengthening of the preceding vowel (e.g. Latin institutione > Italian istituto; PGmc *fimf > Old English five), and (ii) an epenthetic stop (e.g. English Hampstead, Hampshire < O.E. ham + stede, scir). Interestingly, one or the other outcome has been related to specific coarticulatory patterns (Bus in press). Ohala and Bus (1995) have argued that the first outcome, nasal consonant loss, is due to anticipatory vowel nasalization resulting from coarticulatory lowering of the velum for the upcoming nasal consonant and to associated perceptual factors. They provide perceptual evidence that in these sequences the listener attributes the acoustic MARIA-JOSEP SOL 48 effects of velum lowering for the nasal (attenuated amplitude and increased bandwidth of F1 in adjacent vowels) to the similar effects of a wide glottal opening required for high airflow segments, such as /s/, on neighboring vowels, thus discounting the nasal consonant. The second outcome, epenthetic stops, reflects anticipatory raising of the velum (and anticipatory glottal abduction) during the oral constriction for the nasal, which ensures sufficient time and rate of flow to build up pressure for the fricative (Ali et al. 1979). Reverse fricative + nasal sequences, although not the object of extensive investigation, require equally precise coordination of velic and oral gestures. These sequences have resulted in several sound changes, including (i) fricative weakening and loss 2 , and (ii) stop epenthesis. Importantly, the tendency for fricatives to weaken, or disappear, before a nasal may be related to the difficulty involved in combining frication with velopharyngeal opening within a segment observed in the preceding section. Examples of prenasal fricative weakening in historical sound change, morphophonological alternations and dialectal-stylistic variation are shown in Table 1. Prenasal fricative weakening may result in vocalization or gliding, rhotacism, nasal assimilation, and elision. Examples 1-3 and the first example in (c) in Table 1 illustrate vocalization; 4 exemplifies rhotacism; 5-9 illustrate fricative loss, and various examples of nasal assimilation and fricative loss are presented in Section (c). The examples in (c) and the examples of /s/ vocalization in (a) illustrate processes affecting only certain frequent words or combinations of words, thus illustrating the role of frequency in phonological change. The weakening of prenasal fricatives in the Romance data in Table 1(a), examples 1-5, may be argued to be part of a more general historical process of coda weakeningdue to a drecreased oral gesture syllable finallyin Late Latin and Gallo-Romance (Straka 1964; Gess 1999) by which not only fricatives but also other obstruents were lost syllable finally, regardless of the nature of the following segment. We suggest that the weakening of fricatives before nasals found in a variety of languages may be attributed not only to articulatory reduction but more crucially to varying aerodynamic conditions due to the temporal sequencing of velic gestures. Although fricative weakening in Romance also occurs before non-nasals (e.g. Latin insula island > French le; Germanic *bruzdon to embroider > Old Occitan broidar), a number of scholars (Pope 1934:151; Rohlfs 1966; Torreblanca 1976; Recasens 2002) have noted that this process is favored by a following voiced consonant and, in particular, by a following [n], [m], [r] or
2 The term fricative weakening is used here to indicate attenuation of the high frequency noise which characterizes fricatives, due to gestural reduction or aerodynamic factors. Fricative loss is considered the endpoint of the weakening continuum, i.e. extreme attenuation leading to the segment becoming inaudible. In perceptual terms gradient attenuation of the friction noise may result in identification of a discrete segment (e.g. a frictionless continuant, a vowel, a tap, an assimilated segment, or /h/) or in the perceptual loss of the segment (i.e. deletion). THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
49 [l] 3 . Recasens (2002:342) attributes fricative weakening before voiced consonants in general to anticipatory glottal gestures for voicing during the fricative, which result in reduced transglottal flow (due to higher glottal impedance) and lower intensity of frication vis--vis pre-voiceless fricatives, thus making frication more likely to be missed. Other factors besides voicing, however, may be at play in the common weakening of fricatives preceding nasals, laterals, and trills. Fricative weakening may arise from variation in the relative timing of antagonistic positional requirements of the tongue for contiguous lingual fricatives and laterals (raised tongue sides and central critical constriction for the fricative and lowered tongue sides and central contact for the lateral; Ohala 1997b), and lingual fricatives and trills (raised and advanced tongue dorsum and a central groove for /s/ vs predorsum lowering and postdorsum retraction with a lax tongue-tip for the trill; Sol 2002b); in such sequences anticipatory movements for the lateral or the trill may bleed the positional and aerodynamic requirements for audible frication for [z, s]. In a similar way, in fricative + nasal sequences variation in the relative timing of the velic opening gesture and the preceding oral constriction for the fricative (requiring a sealed velum) may result in fricative weakening. In particular, anticipatory velum lowering for the nasal may affect the aerodynamic requirements for the generation of turbulence for the fricative. The examples in Table 1 illustrate that fricatives are weakened into frictionless continuants, or are lost altogether, more often when followed by a nasal segment, involving the same or different articulators, than when followed by non-nasal segments, when they retain their fricative quality. Fricatives have also been found to disappear in connected speech in French before nasal vowels (D. Duez, p.c.), which involve a lower position of the velum than nasal consonants. Consonants other than fricatives may assimilate the velic state of the upcoming nasal in casual speech (e.g. let me ['Icmmij, wouldnt [wonntj, Gimson, 1962), but they do not result in sound change or phonological alternations 4 . The question is then why fricatives are weakened more often than other segment types, and why they are weakened more often before nasal as opposed to non-nasal sounds. We hypothesized that the same aerodynamic factors disfavouring the combination of frication and nasality within a segment are responsible for the weakening/loss of fricatives before nasals: anticipatory movements to lower the velum for the nasal may reduce the oropharyngeal pressure necessary for the generation of turbulence for the fricative. Coarticulatory nasal leakage
3 Thus, for example, in Old French /s/ weakening and loss is found earlier in blmer < blasmer < Lat. *blastemare blame and mler < mesler, medler [l] < Lat. misculare meddle than in fte < feste < Lat. festa holiday (Pope 1934:151, 449). 4 This is most likely because stops tend to show up as oral in all other contexts (i.e. prevocalically, preconsonantally, and prepausally), thus listeners can attribute nasality in stops in stop + nasal sequences to the conditioning effect of the nasal and reconstruct an oral stop. In contrast, fricatives tend to show diminished amplitude of frication not only when followed by nasals but also preconsonantally and prepausally (Sol 2003), thus it is less likely that speakers attribute the weakened fricative to a variety of contexts. MARIA-JOSEP SOL 50 would have a larger effect on voiced fricatives as opposed to voiceless fricatives (Ohala et al. 1998; Sol 2002b), since to generate friction at the oral constriction while air is flowing out through the nasal passage due to anticipatory velopharyngeal opening would require a high volume of flow, and vocal fold vibration reduces airflow through the glottis. Thus, voiced fricatives with overlapping velic movements for the nasal would have two independent systems reducing the pressure drop across the oral constriction required for frication, high impedance to ingoing airflow at the glottis and low impedance to outgoing flow at the velum. In addition, voiced fricatives are known to be shorter than voiceless fricatives and, due to the lesser rate of flow through the vibrating glottis, they take longer to achieve the pressure difference for frication and result in a lower intensity of friction than their voiceless counterparts (Sol 2002b). This makes anticipatory velopharyngeal opening for the nasal more likely to impair audible friction in voiced than in voiceless fricatives. This prediction is in accord with the fact that the majority of examples of fricative weakening in Table 1 involve voiced fricatives. Note that our aerodynamic and perceptual explanation is not at odds with Ohala and Buss (1995) claim presented above that in N + fricative sequences, the nasal disappeared due to acoustic-perceptual factors. The N + fricative sequences they examine (e.g. Latin institutione > Italian istituto), in fact, illustrate that anticipatory velum lowering can be accommodated by a preceding vowel, nasalizing it, and that the acoustic effects of nasalization on the vowel may be misidentified. What we suggest is that in fricative + N sequences nasalization cannot be accommodated by a preceding fricative without compromising its spectral identity. The active role of the listener here would involve reconstructing a frictionless continuant at face value (for example, [j], [w] or a rhotic) or missing the fricative altogether. A second outcome of contiguous fricatives and nasals (which require a tightly closed velum and a lowered velum, respectively) is an epenthetic stop in the transition between the two articulatory configurations, due to a prolonged velic occlusion of the fricative during the oral constriction for the nasal (e.g. Old English glisnian > glisten; Sanskrit krsn > Krishna ~ Krishtna). Along similar lines, the insertion of an epenthetic schwa in /sm/ >[s c mj and /sn/ > [s c nj sequences in Montana Salish (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996:109-110) reflects a delayed velic lowering and oral closure for the nasal relative to the end of the fricative (i.e. an increase in the temporal distance between articulatory gestures), which avoids an overlapped lowered velum during the fricative in order to preserve frication. Thus a very precise synchronization of the velic and oral movements is required in order to sequence segments involving frication and nasality.
THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
51 (a) Historical change
1. [znj, [zm] > [jnj, [jm] Latin mesnata kids, elemos(i)na alms > Catalan mainada, almoina (Badia 1951). Latin asinu donkey > Gascon aine (cited in Recasens 2002). Standard Catalan besnt grandchild > Majorcan Catalan beint. Old French ae(s)mer, Standard Catalan esma > Majorcan Catalan eima (Alcover & Moll 1978-1979); English aim. 2. [yn] > [jn], [wn] Latin agnu lamb, ligna line > S. Italian dialects ['ajcnc], ['Icwna] (cited in Recasens 2002). 3. *[d z m], *[m] > [wm] Latin decimare, decimu > Catalan deumar lessen, reduce, deume tribute. 4. [znj, [zm] > [rnj, [rm] Latin asinu donkey > Old Picard arne. Latin *dis(ju)nare to eat breakfast > Old Occitan dis/rnar (also Cat. dinar). Latin spasmu spasm > Roussillon esparme (cited in Recasens 2002). S. Spanish mismo ['mirmo] same (Recasens 2002). 5. [zm] > [m] Old French ble(s)mir > English blemish. Vulg.Latin blastemare > Old French bla(s)mer > Fr. blmer, English blame. Latin rosmarinu, -aris > *romarinu, -ari(u)s rosemary > Catalan roman, Spanish romero. Standard Catalan quaresma Lent > Majorcan Catalan [ko'rcmc]. 6. *sn > [n] IE snus daughter-in-law, OE snoru > Latin nurus, Greek nus, Armenian nu, Spanish nuera (Watkins 1985). 7. *sn > [n] Burmese *sna > [n a] nose.
(b) Phonological alternations
8. [sn] > [n] IE *dhus-no > Welsh dwn dull, brown colour, OE dun(n) dark brown; BUT IE *dhus-ko > Latin fuscus, OE dox, English dusk (Watkins 1985). IE *dhs-no > Latin fanum temple, English fanatic, (pro)fane; BUT IE *dhes-to > Lat. festus festive, German Fest, Spanish fiesta; IE *dhes-ya > Lat. fesiae, feriae, English fair, Spanish feria (Watkins 1985). 9. [sm] > [m] IE *gras-men > Latin gramen fodder, English grama, gramineous; BUT IE *gras-ter > Greek gaster stomach, English gastric, epigastrium (Watkins 1985).
(c) Stylistic variation
[zn j > [nn j, [jnj isn't [inntj, aint [cint]; doesnt [d\nn tj; wasnt [wonn tj (Gimson 1962). [mOVn] > [mn j, [m 1 n j something [s\mn j, [s\m 1 nj. [nsVn] > [nVn] Vincent that [v i nc n c1] Tyneside English (Local 2003:325). [mIr Vn] > [mr Vn] San Francisco [s mrc nsiskoo] American English (N. Hilty, p.c.). [vm] > [mm] give me, gimme ['gimmi], have mine [ hm'main] (Gimson 1962). [VN] > [VN] like them ['Iaikc mj, tell them ['tcIc mj. BUT like this ['Iaik isj, tell this ['tcI isj. [OVN] > [VN] thank you, thanks [p kju:j, [c pksj. [zn] > [nnj business ['bidnisj, ['binnisj. Table 1: Examples of fricative weakening/loss in fricative + nasal sequences. MARIA-JOSEP SOL 52 4. Experiment. Variations in articulatory overlap The following experiment was designed to find out whether the tendency for prenasal fricatives to weaken or disappear can be attributed to anticipatory velopharyngeal opening for the nasal overlapping the acoustic duration of the fricative, thus diminishing the oropharyngeal pressure required for frication, as argued for concurrent features. In order to test this hypothesis we examined whether anticipatory velic opening occurred in such sequences and, if so, how it affected the aerodynamics and acoustics of fricatives.
4.1 Experimental procedure Simultaneous oropharyngeal pressure (P o ), oral and nasal flow, and audio signal were obtained with PCquirer (Scicon) for five American English speakers producing words containing fricative + nasal sequences at slow and fast speech. The two speaking rates allowed us to observe the effects of increased articulatory overlap on the relative timing of velic and oral gestures, and how such changes in timing affect the pressure build-up for fricatives. The audio signal was digitized and sampled at 12 kHz, and the dc channels were sampled at 1 kHz. P o was obtained by a catheter introduced at the side of the mouth and bent behind the rear molars and connected to a pressure transducer. The volume flow from the mouth and the nose was collected simultaneously with a Rothenberg mask, using one of the outlet holes in the mouth mask for the pressure tube. The pressure and airflow signals were low-pass filtered at 50 Hz. P o and airflow were calibrated as described in Sol (2002a). Words containing fricative + nasal sequences with C1 = [s, zj and C2 = [n, mj in word medial position (e.g. Dessna ['dcsncj, Fresno ['Ircznooj, Missmer ['mismcj, Mesmer ['mczmcj) were read in a carrier phrase. Control sequences with voiced and voiceless alveolar fricatives followed by laterals, stops, fricatives and approximants, all dento-alveolar (e.g. Grizzly [zIj, Gizder [zdj, is the [zj, Ezra [z+j; Esling [sIj, Esda [sdj, less the [sj, Esra [s+j) were also analyzed for comparison. The test and control tokens were randomized in the reading list. The aerodynamic and acoustic data were collected in two different sessions. In the first session, three speakers (JO, MS and DM) read five repetitions of each token at self-selected slow and fast rates. Because the three speakers showed different patterns of velic-oral coordination, two more speakers were recorded in a second session under the same conditions. Speakers JE and RS produced six repetitions of each token at slow and fast rates.
4.2 Measurements and analysis The measurements made on the data are illustrated in Figure 2, which shows the aerodynamic and acoustic data for Say Mesmer again in slow and fast speech for one of the speakers. Measurements were made at the following points in time for the fricative + nasal sequence: onset and offset of friction on the spectrographic records; onset of increased nasal flow (channel 5), indicated THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
53 by a vertical line in Figure 2, reflecting velo-pharyngeal port opening for the nasal /m/; onset of oral closure for the nasal, indicated by a drop in oral flow (dotted line in channel 4), and offset of the nasal, indicated by an increase in oral flow (dashed line in channel 4) and an increase in amplitude and formant structure for the following vowel on the spectrogram. Figure 2 illustrates anticipatory velopharyngeal opening: the vertical lines mark the onset of nasal flow (channel 5) due to velum lowering for the nasal. At this point in time oral pressure decreases (channel 2) and the high frequency noise disappears (in slow speech) or is attenuated (in fast speech) (The sliding center frequency noise after the vertical line in fast speech reflects the effect of anticipatory lip movement, which is known to filter out higher frequencies). The increase in nasal flow leads the drop in oral flow (dotted line in channel 4) for the complete oral constriction for the nasal. Thus, for a few tens of ms there is concurrent (increasing) nasal flow and (decreasing) oral flow, characterised acoustically by some low amplitude aperiodic noise around 3 kHz. In other words, the velum starts to lower during the acoustic duration of the fricative, resulting in a sudden drop in amplitude of high frequency noise.
SLOW FAST [ s c i 'm c z m c + c g c nj [ s c i 'm c z m c + c g c nj Figure 2: (1) Audio signal, (2) filtered P o , (3) unfiltered P o , (4) oral airflow, (5) nasal airflow and 0-5 kHz spectrogram of Say Mesmer again in slow and fast speech. Speaker JO. See text.
The duration of fricatives in test and control sequences was measured on spectrograms and aerodynamic records. In fast speech a considerable number of cases involved blending of the gestures for the two contiguous consonants generally resulting in deocclusivized following stops (as noted by Honorof 2003) or fricativized following sonorants [l, r, n, m]. The aerodynamic records were of great help in segmenting these blended sequences.
MARIA-JOSEP SOL 54 4.3 Results 4.3.1 Patterns of velic movements. The patterns of velic coordination observed in the data are described in patterns 1 through 4, below, and schematized in Figure 3, which shows the oral gestures for the fricative (C1) + nasal (C2) sequence followed by traces of the observed velic patterns. Time 0 is the onset of the oral constriction for the nasal, indicated by the drop in oral flow (dotted line in Figure 2). A delayed oral gesture for the nasal, resulting in an epenthetic vowel, is represented at the bottom of Figure 3.
(1) If onset of velopharyngeal opening is synchronized with the oral constriction for the nasal, nasal flow starts at 0. We take this pattern to reflect a precise synchronization of the supraglottal and velic gestures for the nasal 5 , which allows sequencing of the fricative and the nasal consonant. The oral and velic gestures for the nasal, however, may not be precisely synchronized.
(2) Onset of velum opening, i.e. nasal flow, may occur prior to the complete oral constriction for the nasal (time 0). That is, anticipatory velophrayngeal opening overlaps the acoustic duration of the preceding fricative. In this case we find concurrent oral flow (from the fricative slit constriction) and nasal flow before time 0 in the aerodynamic data, and lack of friction or attenuated friction on the spectrogram during this time interval.
(3) Velopharyngeal opening may be delayed relative to the oral constriction for the nasal (time 0) resulting in a transitional epenthetic stop. In this case the aerodynamic data shows neither nasal flow (velum up) nor oral flow (nasal constriction formed) immediately after 0, and a silent gap on the spectrogram. We found the epenthetic stop to be audible if the oral and velic closure overlapped for over 15 ms. Figure 3 shows that the transitional stops emerging in these sequences are always nasally released, that is, they end when the velum lowers.
(4) Finally, the oral constriction for the nasal may be delayed with respect to the release of the preceding fricative constriction, resulting in an epenthetic vowel. In this case oral and nasal flow is found immediately before 0. Only one such case was found in the data.
5 Whereas it is clear that the oral target gesture for the nasal is a complete constriction, the velic target gesture may not be opening the velum but rather achieving a certain magnitude of velum opening. If this were the case, onset of the oral closure for the nasal would be coordinated with a lowered velum, and nasal flow would begin before 0, as in the case in VN sequences. However, since most of the observed values cluster around 0, we will assume the suggested target coordination. THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
55 It is worth noting that these patterns parallel those found in the historical and synchronic data reviewed in Section 3, in line with Ohalas (1989, 1993) claim that sound change emerges from synchronic phonetic variation.
1. synchronous, onset of nasal flow at 0
2. bleeding Po, oral & nasal flow before 0
3. epenthetic stop, no nasal or oral flow after 0
4. epenthetic vowel, oral & nasal flow before 0
Figure 3: Diagrammatic representation of patterns of velic coordination in fricative-nasal sequences. Traces for the supraglottal movements for C1 and C2 followed by different traces of velum position (dashed lines). See text.
4.3.2 Coordination and timing of velic movements. The patterns of coordination of oral and velic movements in fricative + N sequences for each token at slow and fast rates are presented in Figure 4. This figure plots the time interval between onset of velopharyngeal opening and onset of the oral constriction for the nasal (time 0) for each token for the five speakers. The production of each individual token has been arranged in decreasing duration of that interval. Bars to the left of 0 are cases of anticipatory velopharyngeal opening (onset of nasal flow precedes onset of oral constriction for the nasal; pattern 2 in Figure 3); tokens at 0 represent synchronous onset of oral and velic gestures for the nasal (onset of nasal flow at 0; pattern 1 in Figure 3) and, consequently, a precise sequencing of the fricative and the nasal segment; bars to the right of 0 represent cases of velopharyngeal opening lagging behind the oral closure for the nasal (transitional stops; pattern 3 in Figure 3). The single case of vowel epenthesis (Fresno pronounced ['Ircz c nooj), where the oral constriction for the nasal consonant is delayed relative to fricative release and velum lowering, is indicated by a lined bar (speaker DM, slow speech). Since inspection of the patterns of sequences involving voiced (e.g. Fresno) and voiceless (e.g. Dessna) fricatives showed no differences, both types of sequences were pooled in this graph. White bars represent homorganic sequences, [sn, zn], and grey bars represent heterorganic sequences, [sm, zm]. Each bar represents one token and the number of plotted tokens ranges MARIA-JOSEP SOL 56 between 5-6 for each sequence, [sn, zn, sm, zm], depending on the speaker and session. Figure 4 shows that although all observations cluster around time 0, the five speakers show three distinct patterns of velic-oral coordination. Subject JO exhibits extensive anticipatory velic opening during the acoustic duration of the fricative for homorganic and heterorganic sequences. Such anticipatory velic opening vents the required high oral pressure for turbulence and, thus, frication is attenuated or extinguished (see Figure 2). Speakers JE and MS exhibit a majority of cases of anticipatory velic opening in heterorganic sequences (/sm, zm/), but not in homorganic sequences (/sn, zn/), which exhibit a greater number of transitional stops (i.e. delayed velum lowering) 6 . However, both speakers show cases of a precise synchronization (time 0) and of anticipatory velic opening for homorganic as well as heterorganic sequences. Finally, speakers DM and RS show mostly epenthetic stops, with a few cases of anticipatory velopharyngeal opening. The difference between homorganic and heterorganic sequences for these speakers seems to point in a different direction from that observed for speakers JE and MS: the epenthetic stops, resulting from a prolonged velic raising while the oral occlusion for the nasal has been achieved, appear to be more common and longer for /sm, zm/ sequences than for /sn, zn/ sequences. In spite of speaker-dependent differences, all speakers show cases of anticipatory velic opening bleeding the high oral pressure for frication. Overall, anticipation of velar activity during the fricative was found in 40% of the tokens in slow speech and 26% of the tokens in fast speech. We now turn to differences in the timing of gestures in slow and fast speech. We expected to find greater overlap of anticipatory movements of the velum with the fricative in fast vis--vis slow speech. Contrary to our expectations, Figure 4 shows similar patterns of coordination of velic and oral gestures at slow and fast rates for each speaker, and no major differences in the absolute values of velic timing across rates. Any differences are in the direction of more cases (i.e. more bars with negative values) and a longer period (i.e. larger negative values) of anticipatory velic lowering in slow than in fast speech. That is, the velum appears to be freer to lower before the oral constriction for the nasal is achieved at slow rates, most likely due to the time pressure in fast speech imposing tighter time constraints. However, since fricatives are slightly shorter at faster rates, the same period of anticipatory velopharyngeal opening has a slightly greater percentage effect in fast than in
6 Assuming that the motor instructions for the oral and velic gestures for the nasal are synchronic, and ignoring differences in velocity of articulators, the difference between homorganic and heterorganic sequences could in part be accounted for in terms of gestures involving independent articulators overlapping in timeanticipatory overlap of the labial and velic gesture for /m/ during the alveolar fricative in /sm, zm/ sequences. In homorganic /sn, zn/ sequences involving the same articulatorthe tongue tipthe oral and velic gestures for the nasal would be delayed till the tongue tip was available for repositioning. However, this interpretation does not explain why velic opening lags behind the oral closure for the nasal in homorganic sequences. THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
57 7 slow speech. This is illustrated in Figure 5, which plots the modal duration of anticipatory velopharyngeal opening found for each speaker and rate as a percentage of the average duration of the fricative for that speaker and rate, for voiced and voiceless fricatives separately. Figure 5 shows a slightly larger percentage of overlapping velopharyngeal opening (i.e. longer black bars) in fast than in slow speech for all speakers and sequences. Figure 5 also allows us to observe the larger percentage of anticipatory velopharyngeal opening in voiced as opposed to voiceless fricatives, due to the shorter duration of the former.
SLOW FAST 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms JO_sn_slow JO_sm_slow 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms JO_sn_fast JO_sm_fast
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms JE_sn_slow JE_sm_slow 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms JE_sn_fast JE_sm_fast
7 The mode was plotted rather than the mean because of extreme values in the data. MARIA-JOSEP SOL 58 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms MS_sn_slow MS_sm_slow 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms MS_sn_fast MS_sm_fast
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms DM_sn_fast DM_sm_fast
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms RS_sn_fast RS_sm_fast 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 T o k e n
n u m b e r 60 40 20 0 -20 -40 -60 Time in ms RS_sn_slow RS_sm_slow
Figure 4: Coordination of oral and velic gestures for each production of Fresno and Dessna (white bars), and Mesmer and Missmer (grey bars) at slow and fast rates for each speaker. Tokens with voiced and voiceless fricatives have been pooled.
THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
59 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
v l e s s v d v l e s s v d v l e s s v d v l e s s v d v l e s s v d v l e s s v d v l e s s v d v l e s s v d v l e s s v d v l e s s v d SLOW FAST SLOW FAST SLOW FAST SLOW FAST SLOW FAST JO JE MS DM RS fricative duration overlapped velopharyngeal opening Figure 5: Modal duration of anticipatory velopharyngeal opening (heterorganic and homorganic sequences pooled) as a percentage of the total duration of the voiced or voiceless fricative in slow and fast speech for the five speakers.
4.3.3 Fricative duration. The hypothesis that nasal leakage due to anticipatory velopharyngeal opening extinguishes or attenuates frication for a few tens of ms predicts that fricatives preceding nasal or nasalized segments should be phonetically shorter than those preceding non-nasal segments. We tested this prediction by measuring fricative duration for test and control tokens in slow and fast speech. The results of the measurements show that, as predicted, fricatives preceding nasals are generally shorter than those preceding non-nasals. (Following fricatives and laterals also tend to result in shorter preceding fricatives for some speakers.) Two-way ANOVAs with fricative voicing (voiced, voiceless) and following consonant (nasal, non-nasal) as independent variables, and duration of the fricative as the dependent variable, were performed for each speaker and speech rate separately. Table 2 shows the results for the ANOVAs. The durational differences between fricatives preceding nasal vs non-nasal consonants reached significance for speakers JO, MS and DM in slow and fast speech. Since the interaction between the two factors was significant for speaker JE at faster rates, one-way ANOVAS were carried out for voiced and voiceless fricatives separately for this speaker. Voiced fricatives were found to be significantly shorter preceding nasal than oral consonants (F (1,33) = 11.629, p<0.01), whereas for voiceless fricatives the difference did not reach significance. To conclude, in seven out of ten comparisons fricatives before nasals were significantly shorter than before non- nasals, as expected. A significant main effect of voicing was found for all speakers and rates, with voiced fricatives being significantly shorter than voiceless fricatives.
MARIA-JOSEP SOL 60 JO JE MS DM RS Slow speech Prenasal vs non-prenasal F (1,76) =82.76, p<0.0001 F (1,76) =6.88, p<0.01 F (1,76) =8.92, p<0.01
Fricative voicing F (1,76) =50.92, p<0.0001 F (1,52) =147.19, p<0.0001 F (1,76) =7.67, p<0.01 F (1,76) =86.60, p<0.0001 F (1,44) =104.48, P<0.0001 Interaction Fast speech Prenasal vs non-prenasal F (1,76) =141.0, p<0.0001 F (1,76) =27.02, p<0.0001 F (1,76) =16.78, p<0.001
Fricative voicing F (1,76) =31.86, p<0.0001 F (1,64) =183.43, p<0.0001 F (1,76) =30.12, p<0.0001 F (1,76) =9.53, p<0.01 F (1,44) =66.26, P<0.0001 Interaction F (1,64) =14.84, p<0.001
Table 2: Significant differences for the two factor ANOVAS performed for the independent variable on the rows and fricative duration as the dependent variable for slow and fast speaking rates for each speaker.
5. Discussion and conclusions The results on the timing of velic and oral gestures show that in fricative + nasal sequences the velum may lower during the acoustic duration of the fricative (in 40% of the cases in slow speech and 26% in fast speech in our data). These results are in agreement with those obtained by other investigators. Shosted (2006) obtained nasal and oral flow for VCV utterances where C was a fricative and V was an oral or nasal vowel. He found coarticulatory nasalization during the fricative, with the same acoustic output observed for nasalized fricatives: attenuation of high-frequency energy and increased bandwith of spectral peaks. Recasens (in press) provides electropalatographic and acoustic evidence that /s/ in Majorcan Catalan may be lost in /sn/, /sm/ and /sl / clusters whereas /sb/, /sv/, /sd/, and /sg/ clusters show less extreme cases of fricative weakening. Overall the results indicate that nasal leakage during the fricative reduces the oral pressure required for the generation of turbulence and frication is attenuated or extinguished for a few tens of milliseconds, which may lead to the perceptual loss of the fricative. This is more likely in voiced fricatives which are shorter (Table 2) and, due to reduced transglottal flow, have a lower intensity of friction vis--vis voiceless fricatives (Sol 2002b). Thus, if anticipatory velopharyngeal opening for the nasal overlaps the latter portion of the voiced fricative, the low amplitude turbulence may not be heard. Our data show that, in addition to the effect of voicing in the following segment observed by Pope (1934), Rohlfs (1966), Torreblanca (1976), and Recasens (2002), anticipatory velopharyngeal opening for a following nasal may also favor attenuation or loss of friction. Thus, there seems to be a gradient reduction continuum for coda fricatives: fricative + nasal > fricative + voiced consonant > fricative + voiceless consonant. Anticipatory velopharyngeal opening was hypothesized to be larger at faster speaking rates than at slower rates; however, approximately the same period of an overlapped lowered velum during the latter portion of the fricative was found across rates. The same amount of velic overlap had a slightly larger THE STABILITY OF PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES
61 effect at faster rates due to the slightly shorter duration of the fricative in fast speech. The results in Section 4.3.2 also show cases of epenthetic stops in the transition between fricatives and nasals due to prolonged velum raising for the fricative when the oral constriction for the nasal has been achieved. Such transitional stops are always nasally released and the lack of a strong release burst, which is a perceptual cue for intrusive stops (Ali et al. 1979), is most likely the reason why these epenthetic stops may not be noticed by speakers and have not phonologised as opposed to those emerging in contexts where they are orally released (e.g. nasal + fricative, sense [n t s]; nasal + flap, Catalan cambra < Latin cam(e)ra; nasal + lateral, Spanish temblar < Latin trem(u)lu; lateral + fricative, else [l t s]). Finally, the results in Section 4.3.3 show that the duration of the fricative tends to be shorter preceding nasal than oral consonants, suggesting that the effect of nasal leakage during the latter portion of the fricative is present phonetically. The results obtained are compatible with the proposed account for the historical and synchronic defricativization or loss of fricatives before nasal or nasalized segments: velopharyngeal opening during the latter part of the fricative vents the intraoral pressure, thus reducing or eliminating the required pressure difference across the oral constriction for audible frication. These findings suggest that interarticulatory timing and associated aerodynamic effects may account for weakening of segments crucially dependent on airflow conditions. Indeed, data on the perceptual impact of these aerodynamic and temporal variations is needed to back up the findings of this study.
6. General conclusions We set out to test the hypothesis that the physical and physiological principles used to account for paradigmatic aspects of phonology, such as feature co-occurrence restrictions, can be used to explain syntagmatic aspects, such as phonotactic patterns, context-dependent phonological processes and sound change. The results of the experiments reported here show that speech features requiring high airflow through the oral constriction, such as fricatives 8 , tend to be impaired and become unstable with co-occurring or coarticulatory nasalization. The results in Section 2 show that a reduction in oral pressure during the articulation of a fricative (due to venting oral pressure with a pseudo-velopharyngeal valve) reduces the pressure difference and the particle velocity of the air across the oral constriction, and frication is attenuated or losthence, the constraint against combining the features [fricative] and [nasal] within a segment. The results of the experiment in Section 4 show that when these features occur in contiguous segments, as in fricative + nasal sequences, there can be anticipatory velopharyngeal opening during the acoustic duration of the fricative, which has the same aerodynamic
8 Tongue-tip trills also require high airflow to set the tongue tip into vibration and, consequently, cannot be nasalized. For the incompatibility between trilling and nasality see Sol (2002b). MARIA-JOSEP SOL 62 and acoustic consequences on the fricative as concurrent nasalization. Reduction of the oral pressure and subsequent reduction of the intensity of the high-frequency noise may lead to a non-fricative percept or to missing the fricative altogether. Thus, the same factors responsible for the difficulty in combining the two features within a segment may be used to explain why these features do not combine across segments. Relating constraints on the combination of features within and across segments illustrates the generality that can be achieved by a physically based explanation. The instability of frication when combined with nasalization may be at the origin of a number of phonological patterns, specifically, feature co- occurrence restrictions (e.g. lack of nasal fricatives), phonological change, morphological alternations and stylistic variation (e.g. loss/weakening of fricatives followed by a nasal), and transitional probabilities in the sequencing of sounds (lower lexical frequency of fricatives followed by nasals, Sol (forthcoming)). This is one further example of how phonological structure may emerge from physical constraints as advocated by Ohala (1974, 1983) and Lindblom (1986, 1990), and strongly suggests that the same physical principles may provide an explanation for paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of phonology.
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