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. ...

, denasalization is the loss of nasal airflow in a nasal sound, such as a

nasal 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 major ...

or a nasal vowel. That may be due to

speech pathology Speech is a human vocal communication using language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which hum ...

but also occurs when the sinuses are blocked from a common cold, when it is called a

nasal voice A nasal voice is a type of speaking voice characterized by speech with a "nasal" quality. It can also occur naturally because of genetic variation. Nasal speech can be divided into hypo-nasal and hyper-nasal. Hyponasal speech Hyponasal speech, ...

, which is not a linguistic term. Acoustically, it is the "absence of the expected nasal resonance."Martin Duckworth, George Allen, William Hardcastle & Martin Ball (1990
‘Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for the transcription of atypical speech.’
Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 4: 4, p. 276. The symbol in the Extended IPA is . When one speaks with a cold, the nasal passages still function as a resonant cavity so a denasalized nasal does not sound like a voiced oral stop , and a denasalized vowel does not sound like an oral vowel . However, there are cases of historical or allophonic denasalization that have produced oral stops. In some languages with nasal vowels, such as Paicĩ, nasal consonants may occur only before nasal vowels; before oral vowels, prenasalized stops are found. That allophonic variation is likely to be from a historical process of partial denasalization. Similarly, several languages around

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

underwent a process of denasalization about 100 years ago. Except in special

speech register In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or in a particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow pre ...

s, such as

baby talk Baby talk is a type of speech associated with an older person speaking to a child or infant. It is also called caretaker speech, infant-directed speech (IDS), child-directed speech (CDS), child-directed language (CDL), caregiver register, parent ...

, the nasals became the voiced stops . It appears from historical records that there was an intermediate stage in which the stops were prenasalized stops or poststopped nasals . Something similar has occurred with word-initial nasals in

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

; in some contexts, are denasalized to . The process is sometimes represented with the IPA and , which simply places the IPA denasalization diacritic on and to show the underlying phoneme. In speech pathology, practice varies in whether is a partially denasalized , with for full denasalization, or is a target whether partially denasalized or a fully denasalized .Anette Lohmander (2011) ''Cleft Palate Speech: Assessment and Intervention'', §7.5.2

References

{{reflist Phonetics Nasalization

See also

References