To be nasalized, or not to be nasalized

Vowel nasalization is a common process found in languages with or without phonemic contrasts between oral and nasal vowels. In English, there are no phonemic distinctions between oral and nasal vowels. Oral vowels are nasalized when followed by nasals. In Bengali and Hindi, where there are phonemic distinctions between oral and nasal vowels, oral vowels are nasalized when followed by nasals [Ferguson and Chowdhury (1960)]. In Taiwanese, which is a language with phonemic nasal and oral vowels, the presence and absence of nasality in the vowel nucleus is the major cue to lexical identification of words such as /saŋ−|bi˧/ [saŋ˧] ‘‘send rice,’’ /saŋ−mi˧/[saŋ˧m∼i˧] ‘‘send things’’ [Pan (1997)]. Thus the nasalization of Taiwanese oral vowels, which is a process based on the ‘‘ease of articulation’’ principle, would impose difficulties for lexical identification. This study used both nasal airflow and acoustical data to investigate whether Taiwanese oral vowels are nasalized when both preceded and followed by nasals in words such as /tsin-˧gɔŋ/ [tsin˧ŋɔŋ˧] ‘‘very silly.″ The results showed that Taiwanese vowels are not nasalized when positioned between nasals. It is proposed that lexical identification interacts with phonetic process and prevents the vowel nasalization from occurring. [Work supported by NSC, Taiwan.]