title: Palatal complexity revisited: an electropalatographic analysis of /see text for symbol/ in Brazilian Portuguese with comparison to Peninsular Spanish.
abstract: Are palatal consonants articulated by multiple tongue gestures (coronal and dorsal) or by a single gesture that brings the tongue into contact with the palate at several places of articulation? The lenition of palatal consonants (resulting in approximants) has been presented as evidence that palatals are simple, not complex: When reduced, they do not lose their coronal gesture and become dorsals; instead, they manifest reduced linguopalatal contact while retaining their anterior place of articulation. The frequently-reported deocclusivization of the Brazilian Portuguese (BP) palatal nasal may support this claim. However, the linguopalatal configuration of this sound has not been studied directly. Electropalatographic evidence from three speakers of BP (compared with data from three speakers of Peninsular Spanish) demonstrates that the palatal nasal is frequently realized as an approximant. There is no evidence of anterior occlusion in BP's post-palatal, lenited nasal. Under conditions of focus/hyperarticulation, there is no evidence of stronger/more anterior occlusion. We argue that the articulatory target of the BP palatal nasal is neither occluded nor anterior.
authors: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Linguistics, 4080 Foreign Languages Building, 707 S. Mathews Avenue, MC-168, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA. rshosted@illinois.edu
authors: Ryan
authors: R
authors: Shosted
authors: José Ignacio
authors: JI
authors: Hualde
authors: Daniel
authors: D
authors: Scarpace
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil; D004594:Electrophysiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D009296:Nasal Cavity / Q000502:physiology; D010159:Palate / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013030:Spain; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D014059:Tongue / Q000502:physiology*