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Spontaneous Nasalization in Thai: a Case of Velopharyngeal Underspecification

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Spontaneous Nasalization in Thai: a Case of Velopharyngeal Underspecification SPONTANEOUS NASALIZATION IN THAI: A CASE OF VELOPHARYNGEAL UNDERSPECIFICATION Sarah E. Johnson, Ryan K. Shosted Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [email protected] ABSTRACT ter glottal consonants is velopharyngeal underspec- ification (VPU). Because the place of primary con- Spontaneous nasalization, the emergence of nasal- striction is at the glottis and below the velum, there ization in contexts lacking an historical nasal is no aerodynamic need to close the velopharyngeal phoneme, often occurs during vowels adjacent to port [12]. Contrast this with configurations such glottal constants, as in Thai. One explanation for as the voiceless plosive /th/ where velar closure is this nasalization is velopharyngeal underspecifica- necessary to facilitate pressure buildup at the lin- tion (VPU) of glottal consonants: the lack of any gual constriction for the release burst. Applied to requirement for velar closure. If VPU is the source Thai, the explanation of VPU would attribute vowel of spontaneous nasalization in Thai we expect to nasalization after glottal consonants to a lack of ve- find greater nasalization during glottal consonants lar closure during /h/ and /P/. This way, the origin of compared to adjacent nasalized vowels. To test this spontaneous vowel nasalization in Thai may actually we recorded nasal airflow in six speakers of central follow a similar pattern as French in that coarticula- Thai. Results showed greater nasal airflow during tion is involved. In French, VPO originated from /h/ compared to following nasalized vowels. This a nearby nasal consonant like /n/ and spread to the finding suggests that the starting point of nasaliza- adjacent vowel. Similarly, VPO in Thai may have tion in Thai is the glottal consonant and that nasal- originated during the glottal consonants /h/ and /P/ ization spreads to the following vowel. due to VPU and then spread to the following vowel. If spontaneous vowel nasalization in Thai origi- Keywords: Nasalization, Thai, aerodynamics nated from VPU of adjacent glottal consonants, we would expect to find greater VPO during Thai con- 1. INTRODUCTION sonants /h/ and /P/ compared to the following spon- taneously nasalized vowels. This is because the The historical process of vowel nasalization typi- starting point of nasalization would be the glottal cally occurs when a previously non-nasal vowel is consonant, while the following vowel may be nasal- in temporal proximity to an etymologically nasal ized through coarticulation. In the present study we phoneme. Through coarticulation the vowel be- analyze integrated nasal airflow (cumulative nasal comes nasalized. An example is Latin UNUS ‘one’ airflow during a segment) and the temporal loca- that later became French [˜œ] un when the nasal tion of maximum nasal airflow in Thai glottal con- consonant was dropped [13]. A second origin of sonants and vowels. Nasal airflow has been found to vowel nasalization, spontaneous nasalization, is the correlate with velopharyngeal opening and this mea- emergence of nasalization in contexts lacking any sure is often applied to study nasality [3, 6, 15, 16]. historical etymological nasal [1]. This process is While nasal airflow is correlated with VPO, the documented in languages like British English, e.g. airstream mechanism can affect this relationship. [h˜a:v@d] ‘Harvard’, and Thai, e.g. [h˜E] “parade" While we expect to be able to measure nasal airflow and [Pãw] “to take", and other languages including during /h/ and thus infer VPO, this will likely not be Lahu/Lisu, Bzhedukh, and Laos [1, 2, 4, 10, 11]. possible during /P/. Because the glottis is closed dur- Spontaneous nasalization in Thai only occurs after ing /P/, there is likely to be minimal supraglottal air- /h/ and /P/ and is more likely during low vowels flow. Therefore, while VPO may be large during /P/, [5, 11]. Recent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) we would not be able to infer this from nasal airflow data of velopharyngeal opening (VPO) in Thai has alone. While we include /P/ in the current study to verified previous impressionistic accounts of spon- demonstrate this point, we expect that we will only taneous nasalization during low vowels after /h/ and be able to test our predictions regarding the origin to a lesser extent after /P/ [7, 11, 5]. of greatest nasal airflow for syllables beginning with One explanation for spontaneous nasalization af- /h/. 2. METHODS with fixed effects including syllable, location of maximum integrated flow (MaxLoc), and segment Six native speakers of central Thai were recruited type (consonant or vowel). Speaker was included as to participate in an aerodynamic study. Four of the a random effect. Due to the small sample size rep- speakers were female and two were male; all origi- resenting each gender, we did not include gender in nated from Central Thailand near the Bangkok area. the model. Their ages ranged from 18-28 y.o.. The data pre- sented here is part of a larger project on Thai aero- 3. RESULTS dynamics and phonation. The speakers produced a set of monosyllabic words and morphemes embed- ded in a carrier phrase, /phu:tĎ¿ khamĂ¿ wa:Ď¿ “_” Pi:kĂ¿ Figure 1: Integrated nasal airflow for syllables Ă with /a/. khraN ¿/ “Say the word ‘_’ again”. The target words varied the long vowels /a:, O:, E:, e:/ after /h/ and Integral of raw nasal airflow /P/. /a, O, E/ are reported to nasalize after /h/ and to a lesser extent after /P/, while /e/ is not reported to nasalize after either glottal consonant [5, 11]. We 2 also include the syllables /na:/ (contextually nasal- Segment ized), /tha:/ (non-nasal), and /da:/ (non-nasal) for Cons 1 Vowel comparison. Speakers produced 10-12 repetitions of each item. Integrated nasal airflow Data was collected with AcqKnowledge data ac- 0 quisition and analysis software (BIOPAC, version ha:ʔa: na: da: tha: 3.9.1). All data was sampled at 2000 Hz using Segment the MP100 data acquisition unit. Participants held a double-compartment mask against the mouth and Results of a linear mixed effects model (Table nose (Glottal Enterprise, Syracuse, NY), intended to 1) show significant effects between the location of capture oral and nasal airflow independently. Two maximum nasal airflow (consonant or vowel) and heated pneumotachs were inserted into vents on nasal airflow. Furthermore, whether the segment the mask. Rubber cannulae connected the pressure was a consonant or a vowel also effected nasal air- ports to a Biopac TSD160a pressure transducer that flow. Finally, the integrated nasal airflow of /ha:/ was recorded +-12 cm H20. A BIOPAC AFT6 600 ml significantly different, i.e. greater, than any other calibration syringe was used to calibrate the sig- syllable. nal for both the oral and nasal mask compartments. Figure 1 shows boxplots of integrated nasal air- The airflow signal was also rectified during each flow for all syllables with the vowel /a:/. Two post- recording session by adjusting the signal to zero hoc analyses of the lme model were performed by during a voiceless stop /k/. Acoustics were simul- calculating estimated marginal means with a Tukey taneously collected for segmenting purposes using multiplicity adjustment [9]. The first test was per- a C520 head-set microphone recorded at 44.1 kHz formed on integrated nasal airflow by Syllable con- (AKG Harman, Stamford, CT). trast, while the second test was performed on in- tegrated nasal airflow by Segment type (consonant 2.1. Analyses or vowel) within the same syllables. These tests re- vealed many differences in integrated nasal airflow Calibrated and rectified nasal airflow was normal- among segments. The consonant /h/ exhibited the ized to 20 samples over time, 10 during the onset greatest integrated nasal airflow of any other syllable consonant and 10 during the following vowel. The during the consonant. /n/ exhibited less integrated integral was then taken of all samples within the con- nasal airflow than the consonant of /ha:/, but similar sonant and the vowel separately. This yielded a sin- nasal airflow to other /h/ syllables (p>0.05). Both gle measure of cumulative nasal airflow during both /h/ and /n/ were produced with significantly more in- the consonant and vowel for each token. For each tegrated nasal airflow than their following respective token, the maximum of integrated nasal airflow was vowel (p<0.05). All other syllables are produced determined and logged as either occurring during the with similar integrated nasal airflow during the con- onset consonant or the vowel (MaxLoc). sonant and following vowel. The data were analyzed with a linear mixed ef- Figure 2 shows boxplots of integrated nasal air- fects model using the lmerTest package in R [8, 14]. flow for all vowels after /h/ and /P/. Again, we no- Integrated nasal airflow was the dependent variable tice that the consonant of /ha:/ was produced with Figure 2: Integrated nasal airflow for vowels after glottal consonants Integral of raw nasal airflow 2 Segment Cons Vowel 1 Integrated nasal airflow 0 ¢ ¡¢ £ ¡£ ¡ ha:¡ a: h : : h : : he: e: Segment greater nasal airflow than all other consonants and vowels, including other /h/ syllables (p<0.05). Ev- ery consonant /h/ exhibited greater integrated nasal airflow than every /P/. Most vowels after /h/ were also produced with greater nasal airflow than vow- Nasal airflow els after /P/, except for the contrasts /hE:/ vs /Pa:/, (Intercept) 0:90(0:07)∗∗∗ /hO:/ vs /Pa:/ and /he:/ vs any syllable beginning with Syllable:hE: −0:34(0:03)∗∗∗ /P/ (p>0.05). Furthermore, while nasal airflow was Syllable:hEe: −0:42(0:03)∗∗∗ greater for every /h/ compared to the immediately Syllable:hO: −0:24(0:03)∗∗∗ following vowel, nasal airflow was similar during Syllable:Pa: −0:65(0:04)∗∗∗ every /P/ and its following vowel. Overall, vow- Syllable:PE: −0:69(0:03)∗∗∗ els after /P/ exhibited similar nasal airflow as pre- Syllable:Pe: −0:69(0:03)∗∗∗ dictably non-nasal vowels of /da:/ and /tha:/, with Syllable:PO: −0:69(0:03)∗∗∗ the exception for the vowel of /Pa:/ compared to /hE:/ Syllable:na: −0:38(0:03)∗∗∗ and /hO:/.
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