“Post-stopped nasals”: An acoustic investigation

Abstract

In some dialects of Chinese and Miao, the nasals in syllable-initial position have been described as being accompanied by a homorganic stop, which are often transcribed with superscripts: [mb], [nd], and [ŋg], as a deliberate attempt to characterize these segments as phonetically distinct from prenasalized stops, [mb], [nd], [ŋg]. In our study, the acoustic nature of these “post-stopped” nasals will be explored, since no instrumental study has been conducted on them. A preliminary investigation of data from two Zhongshan Chinese speakers confirm that these nasals are different both perceptually and acoustically from the prenasalized stops in other languages. It is found that the so-called “stop” component in Zhongshan syllable-initial nasals is not a stop, but a burst that occurs simultaneous with the oral release following the nasal. Such bursts occur sporadically in English, but are consistently produced in the Zhongshan nasals, and are perceived as homorganic stops accompanying the nasals. The waveforms also show a characteristic shape, with a sharp rise in amplitude at vowel onset. The results suggest the precise synchronization of velic closure with oral release.