Article

Name: Nasalized vowels in the Altai language based on nasography and spectrography

Authors: T. V. Timkin

Institute of Philology SB RAS, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Фонетика

Abstract:

The paper presents the examination of the vowel nasalization in the Altai language. The study involved an experiment on nasography. A native speaker of the Altai language recited a program comprising 180 lexemes in an isolated context, repeating it three times. The speech was captured by the icSpeech dual-microphone system that allows sound from the mouth and nose to be recorded separately. The recordings were annotated using the Praat software and then analyzed with the Emu-SDMS corpus system using the R programming language. The nasality coefficient was calculated by comparing sound levels across channels. Vowels before nasal consonants exhibited a slow increase in nasality coefficient, gradually transitioning from a low to a medium level during vowel lengthening. Vowels following nasal consonants exhibited pronounced nasalization, with a heightened nasality level at the vowel onset and a consistent mid-level nasality throughout its duration. Vowels between two nasal consonants had a combination of these two types: high nasality level in the beginning, then nasality fall followed by slow growth. The average nasality coefficients for pure vowels were 6030 units, for prenasal vowels were 9860 units, for postnasal vowels were 16990 units, and for internasal vowels were 18290 units. Next, the spectra of nasalized and non-nasalized vowels were compared. The formant frequencies and levels were measured using the Praat software. The data shows a significant decrease in F1 level for nasalized vowels as opposed to non-nasalized vowels. The phenomenon can be attributed to the initial nasal antiresonance, correlating with acoustical models and typological data.

Keywords: Altai language, nasalized vowels, nasography, nasometry, experimental phonetics

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