An Acoustic Investigation of The Duration of Nasalization in Ga

Authors

  • Rebecca Atchoi Akpanglo-Nartey University of Education, Winneba.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v6i1.67

Keywords:

Nasalization, Nasal, Duration, Acoustic, Formants, PRAAT, Vowel quality

Abstract

Relationship between vowel quality and nasalization has seen a number of investigations in languages with results indicating that the duration of nasalization vary with the quality of vowel. While some of the investigations reported that greater velopharyngeal opening occurs in mid-high and high back vowels in some languages, other investigation results show that low vowels are nasalized with greater velopharyngeal opening than high vowels in some other languages. It has been argued that in vowel nasalization low vowels are preferred because low vowels have longer duration in that long vowels are more likely to be nasalized than short vowels. This study sets out to investigate the relationship between the quality of vowels and nasalization in Ga by using acoustic measures. The study makes use of four native Ga speakers’ production of oral and nasal vowels in words. The words were recorded in a carrier frame and was analysed using PRAAT. The results indicate that nasal vowels have longer duration than oral vowels and the nasal part of the nasal vowel is longer in high vowels than it is in the low vowels. Generally, the nasal portion of the nasal vowel has longer duration than the oral portion of the vowel. Also the Front vowels seem to have longer nasal portions than the back vowels. Another observation from the analysis was that the nasal vowels have higher F1 and F2 values than the oral vowel. Thus the amount of nasalization in Ga vowels is influenced by the quality of vowel.

Author Biography

Rebecca Atchoi Akpanglo-Nartey, University of Education, Winneba.

I am a senior lecturer in the department of Applied Linguistics, University of Education, Winneba. I hold a PhD in Applied Linguistics and my specialty areas are Phonetics, Phonology, and Sociolinguistics.

References

Akpanglo-Nartey, R. (2011). Vowels of GaDangme: A Spectrographic Study. VDM Verlag Dr. Muller GmbH & Co.KG. Saarbrucken, Germany

Al-Bamerni, A. (1983). Oral, Velic and Laryngeal Coarticulation across Languages. Ph. D.
dissertation. Oxford University, Oxford

Delvaux, P., Metens, T., & Soquet, A. (2002). French Nasal Vowels: Acoustic and Articulatory
properties. Proc. 7th ICSLP 1, 53-56

Hajek, J. and & Maeda, S. (2000). Investigating universals of
sound change: The effect of
vowel height and duration on the development of distinctive nasalization. Broe, M. Pierrehumbert, J. (eds), Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and Lexicon.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 52-69

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Published

06/30/2017

How to Cite

Akpanglo-Nartey, R. A. (2017). An Acoustic Investigation of The Duration of Nasalization in Ga. Ghana Journal of Linguistics, 6(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v6i1.67