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In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or
nasalized consonant In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast maj ...
, is an occlusive
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...
produced with a lowered
velum Velum may refer to: Human anatomy * Superior medullary velum, anterior medullary velum or valve of Vieussens, white matter, in the brain, which stretches between the superior cerebellar peduncles ** Frenulum of superior medullary velum, a slightl ...
, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
are , and , in words such as ''nose'', ''bring'' and ''mouth''. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages.


Definition

Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal occlusives, in which air escapes through the nose but not through the mouth, as it is blocked (occluded) by the lips or tongue. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound. Rarely, non-occlusive consonants may be nasalized. Most nasals are voiced, and in fact, the nasal sounds and are among the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Voiceless nasals occur in a few languages such as Burmese,
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
, Icelandic and Guaraní. (Compare oral stops, which block off the air completely, and fricatives, which obstruct the air with a narrow channel. Both stops and fricatives are more commonly voiceless than voiced, and are known as obstruents.) In terms of acoustics, nasals are sonorants, which means that they do not significantly restrict the escape of air (as it can freely escape out the nose). However, nasals are also obstruents in their articulation because the flow of air through the mouth is blocked. This duality, a sonorant airflow through the nose along with an obstruction in the mouth, means that nasal occlusives behave both like sonorants and like obstruents. For example, nasals tend to pattern with other sonorants such as and , but in many languages, they may develop from or into stops. Acoustically, nasals have bands of energy at around 200 and 2,000 Hz. 1. The symbol is commonly used to represent the dental nasal as well, rather than , as it is rarely distinguished from the alveolar nasal. Examples of languages containing nasal occlusives: The voiced retroflex nasal is is a common sound in
Languages of India Languages spoken in India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians, both families together are sometimes know ...
. The voiced palatal nasal is a common sound in European languages, such as: Spanish ,
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
and Italian ,
Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
and Hungarian , Czech and Slovak , Polish , Occitan and Portuguese , and (before a vowel) Modern Greek . Many
Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...
, including
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
, Dutch,
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
and Swedish, as well as varieties of Chinese such as Mandarin and
Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding a ...
, have , and .
Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...
has a six-fold distinction between , , , , and . The Nuosu language also contrasts six categories of nasals, , , , , and . They are represented in romanisation by m, n, hm, hn, ny, and ng. Nuosu also contrasts nasalised stops and affricates with their voiced, unvoiced, and aspirated versions. Catalan, Occitan, Spanish, and Italian have , , as phonemes, and and as allophones. Nevertheless, among many younger speakers of Rioplatense Spanish, there is no palatal nasal but only a palatalized nasal, , as in English ''canyon''. In Brazilian Portuguese and
Angolan Portuguese Angolan Portuguese ( pt, Português de Angola) is a group of dialects and accents of the Portuguese language used mostly in Angola, where it is an official language. In 2005 it was used there by 60% of the population, including by 20% as their f ...
, written , is typically pronounced as , a nasal palatal approximant, a nasal glide (in Polish, this feature is also possible as an allophone). Semivowels in Portuguese often nasalize before and always after nasal vowels, resulting in and . What would be
coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
nasal occlusives in other West Iberian languages is only slightly pronounced before dental consonants. Outside this environment the nasality is spread over the vowel or become a nasal diphthong (''mambembe'' , outside the
final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...
, only in Brazil, and ''mantém'' in all Portuguese dialects). The Japanese syllabary kana ん, typically romanized as ''n'' and occasionally ''m'', can manifest as one of several different nasal consonants depending on what consonant follows it; this allophone, colloquially written in IPA as , is known as the
moraic nasal A mora (plural ''morae'' or ''moras''; often symbolized μ) is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as ''ba'' consists of one mora (''monomoraic'') ...
, per the language's moraic structure.
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
has a set of voiceless nasals, ̥ ̥and �̊ which occur predominantly as a result of
nasal mutation The morphology of the Welsh language has many characteristics likely to be unfamiliar to speakers of English or continental European languages like French or German, but has much in common with the other modern Insular Celtic languages: Irish, S ...
of their voiced counterparts ( and . The Mapos Buang language of New Guinea has a phonemic uvular nasal, which contrasts with a velar nasal. It is extremely rare for a language to have as a phoneme. Yanyuwa is highly unusual in that it has a seven-way distinction between ̪ ��( palato-alveolar), �̟( front velar), and �̠( back velar). This may be the only language in existence that contrasts nasals at seven distinct points of articulation. The term 'nasal occlusive' (or 'nasal stop') is generally abbreviated to ''nasal''. However, there are also nasalized fricatives, nasalized flaps,
nasal glide Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...
s, and nasal vowels, as in French, Portuguese, and Polish. In the
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
, nasal vowels and nasalized consonants are indicated by placing a tilde (~) over the vowel or consonant in question: French ''sang'' , Portuguese ''bom'' .


Voiceless nasals

A few languages have phonemic voiceless nasal occlusives. Among them are Icelandic, Faroese, Burmese, Jalapa Mazatec, Kildin Sami,
Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
, and Central Alaskan Yup'ik. Iaai of New Caledonia has an unusually large number of them, with , along with a number of
voiceless approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...
s.


Other kinds of nasal consonant

Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) distinguish purely nasal consonants, the nasal occlusives such as ''m n ng'' in which the airflow is purely nasal, from partial nasal consonants such as prenasalized consonants and nasal
pre-stopped consonant In linguistics, pre-stopping, also known as pre-occlusion or pre-plosion, is a phonological process involving the historical or allophonic insertion of a very short stop consonant before a sonorant, such as a short before a nasal or a lateral . ...
s, which are nasal for only part of their duration, as well as from nasalized consonants, which have simultaneous oral and nasal airflow. In some languages, such as Portuguese, a nasal consonant may have occlusive and non-occlusive allophones. In general, therefore, a nasal consonant may be: * a nasal occlusive, such as English ''m, n, ng'' * a
nasal approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a ...
, as in ''nh'' in some Portuguese dialects * a nasal flap, such as the nasal retroflex lateral flap in Pashto * prenasalized consonants, pre-stopped nasals and post-stopped nasals * nasal clicks such as Zulu ''nq, nx, nc'' * other nasalized consonants, such as nasalized fricatives


Languages without nasals

A few languages, perhaps 2%, contain no phonemically distinctive nasals. This led Ferguson (1963) to assume that all languages have at least one primary nasal occlusive. However, there are exceptions.


Lack of phonemic nasals

When a language is claimed to lack nasals altogether, as with several Niger–Congo languagesThese languages lie in a band from western Liberia to southeastern Nigeria, and north to southern Burkina Faso. They include: *Liberia: Kpelle (Mande); Grebo, Klao (Kru) *Burkina Faso: Bwamu (Gur) *Ivory Coast: Dan, Guro-Yaoure, Wan-Mwan, Gban/Gagu, Tura (Mande); Senadi/Senufo (Gur); Nyabwa, Wè (Kru); Ebrié, Avikam, Abure (Kwa) *Ghana: Abron, Akan, Ewe (Kwa) *Benin: Gen, Fon (Kwa) *Nigeria: Mbaise Igbo, Ikwere (Igboid) *CAR: Yakoma (Ubangi) (Heine & Nurse, eds, 2008, ''A Linguistic Geography of Africa'', p.46) or the Pirahã language of the Amazon, nasal and non-nasal or prenasalized consonants usually alternate allophonically, and it is a theoretical claim on the part of the individual linguist that the nasal is not the basic form of the consonant. In the case of some Niger–Congo languages, for example, nasals occur before only nasal vowels. Since nasal vowels are phonemic, it simplifies the picture somewhat to assume that nasalization in occlusives is allophonic. There is then a second step in claiming that nasal vowels nasalize oral occlusives, rather than oral vowels denasalizing nasal occlusives, that is, whether are phonemically without full nasals, or without prenasalized stops. Postulating underlying oral or prenasalized stops rather than true nasals helps to explain the apparent instability of nasal correspondences throughout Niger–Congo compared with, for example, Indo-European. This analysis comes at the expense, in some languages, of postulating either a single nasal consonant that can only be syllabic, or a larger set of nasal vowels than oral vowels, both typologically odd situations. The way such a situation could develop is illustrated by a Jukunoid language, Wukari. Wukari allows oral vowels in syllables like ''ba, mba'' and nasal vowels in ''bã, mã'', suggesting that nasals become prenasalized stops before oral vowels. Historically, however, *mb became **mm before nasal vowels, and then reduced to *m, leaving the current asymmetric distribution. In older speakers of the Tlingit language, and are allophones. Tlingit is usually described as having an unusual, perhaps unique lack of despite having five lateral obstruents; the older generation could be argued to have but at the expense of having no nasals.


Lack of phonetic nasals

Several of languages surrounding Puget Sound, such as Quileute (Chimakuan family), Lushootseed (Salishan family), and Makah (Wakashan family), are truly without any nasalization whatsoever, in consonants or vowels, except in special speech registers such as baby talk or the archaic speech of mythological figures (and perhaps not even that in the case of Quileute). This is an areal feature, only a few hundred years old, where nasals became voiced stops ( became , etc.) after colonial contact. For example, "Snohomish" is currently pronounced ''sdohobish'', but was transcribed with nasals in the first English-language records. The only other places in the world where this is known to occur are in Melanesia. In the central dialect of the Rotokas language of Bougainville Island, nasals are only used when imitating foreign accents. (A second dialect has a series of nasals.) The
Lakes Plain languages The Lakes Plain languages are a family of Papuan languages, spoken in the Lakes Plain of Indonesian New Guinea. They are notable for being heavily tonal and for their lack of nasal consonants. Classification The Lakes Plain languages were tenta ...
of West Irian are similar. The unconditioned loss of nasals, as in Puget Sound, is unusual. However, currently in Korean, word-initial and are shifting to and . This started out in nonstandard dialects and was restricted to the beginning of prosodic units (a common position for fortition), but has expanded to many speakers of the standard language to the beginnings of common words even within prosodic units.Yoshida, Kenji, 2008. "Phonetic implementation of Korean 'denasalization' and its variation related to prosody". IULC Working Papers, vol. 6.


See also

* Oral consonant * Nasal click * Nasal vowel * Nasalization * List of phonetics topics * Syllabic consonant


Notes


References


Bibliography

*Ferguson (1963) 'Assumptions about nasals', in Greenberg (ed.) ''Universals of Language'', pp. 50–60. *Saout, J. le (1973) 'Languages sans consonnes nasales', ''Annales de l Université d'Abidjan'', H, 6, 1, 179–205. * Williamson, Kay (1989) 'Niger–Congo overview', in Bendor-Samuel & Hartell (eds.) ''The Niger–Congo Languages'', 3–45. {{Authority control Manner of articulation