phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

, a nasal release is the release of a

stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), li ...

into a

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

. Such sounds are transcribed 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 ...

with superscript nasal letters, for example as in English ''catnip'' . In English words such as ''sudden'' in which historically the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the and , , many speakers today make only one contact. That is, the is released directly into the : . Although this is a minor phonetic detail in English (in fact, it is commonly transcribed as having no audible release: , ), nasal release is more important in some other languages.

Prestopped nasals

In some languages, such consonants may occur before vowels and are called '' prestopped nasals''. Prestopped nasals and

prenasalized stop Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather ...

s occur when the

oral cavity In animal anatomy, the mouth, also known as the oral cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on t ...

is closed and the

nasal cavity The nasal cavity is a large, air-filled space above and behind the nose in the middle of the face. The nasal septum divides the cavity into two cavities, also known as fossae. Each cavity is the continuation of one of the two nostrils. The nasal ...

is opened by lowering the

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 ...

, but the timing of both events does not coincide. A prenasalized stop starts out with a lowered velum that raises during the occlusion, much like the din ''candy''. A postnasalized stop or prestopped nasal begins with a raised velum that lowers during the occlusion. That causes an audible nasal release, as in English ''sudden''. The

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...

are most famous for having (non-phonemic) prestopped nasals. That can be seen in place names such as the

Dniester River The Dniester, ; rus, Дне́стр, links=1, Dnéstr, ˈdⁿʲestr; ro, Nistru; grc, Τύρᾱς, Tyrās, ; la, Tyrās, la, Danaster, label=none, ) ( ,) is a transboundary river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and t ...

. The Russian word for "day", for example, is inflected ''день, дня, дни, дней'' , "day, day's, days, days'". Prestopped nasals area also found in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...

. Eastern Arrernte has both prenasalized stops and prestopped nasals, but it does not have word-initial

consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...

s. Compare "good" (with nasal stop), "make" (with prenasalized stop), "coolamon" (with prestopped nasal). There is little or no phonetic difference between a "

" () and a cluster (). It is similar for prestopped nasals. The difference is essentially one of phonological analysis. For example, languages with word-initial (or ) but no other word-initial clusters, will often be analyzed as having a unitary prenasalized stop rather than a cluster of nasal + stop. For some languages, it is claimed that a difference exists (often medially) between and . Even in such cases, however, alternative analyses are possible. Ladefoged and Maddieson investigated one such claimed case and concluded that the two sounds were better analyzed as /nd/ and /nnd/, respectively.

Final consonants with nasal release

However, some languages such as Vietnamese and Malay, which are generally described as having no audible release in final stops, actually have a short nasal release in such cases. Since all final stops in these two languages are

voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...

, the nasal release is voiceless as well. Although the difference is commonly chalked up to aspiration, final nasal release is contrastive in Wolof:''Principles of Phonetics,'' p. 362. John Laver, Cambridge University Press, 1994. ::

References

{{IPA navigation Consonants

Release Release may refer to: * Art release, the public distribution of an artistic production, such as a film, album, or song * Legal release, a legal instrument * News release, a communication directed at the news media * Release (ISUP), a code to iden ...

Prestopped nasals

Final consonants with nasal release

See also

References