Temporal characteristics of nasalization in children and adult speakers of American English and Korean during production of three vowel contexts.
The purpose of this study was to identify and compare the temporal characteristics of nasalization in relation to (1) languages, (2) vowel contexts, and (3) age groups. Two distinct acoustic energies from the mouth and nose were recorded during speech production (/pamap, pimip, pumup/) using two microphones to obtain the absolute and proportional measurements on the acoustic temporal characteristics of nasalization. Twenty-eight normal adults (14 American English and 14 Korean speakers) and 28 normal children (14 American English and 14 Korean speakers) participated in this study. In both languages, adults showed shorter duration of nasalization than children within all three vowel contexts. The high vowel context revealed longer duration of nasalization than the low vowel context in both languages. There was no significant difference of temporal characteristics of nasalization between American English and Korean. Nasalization showed different timing characteristics between children and adults across vowel contexts. The results are discussed in association with developmental coarticulation and the relationship between acoustic consequences of articulatory events and vowel height.
Ha
Seunghee
S
Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA. sha@utk.edu
Kuehn
David
D
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009296:Nasal Cavity / Q000502:physiology*; D010699:Phonation / Q000502:physiology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States