Aspectos fonéticos del proceso de velarización en las nasales del español y del catalán

Abstract

Nasal consonants are distinguished from other consonantal articulations by the simultaneous occurrence of an oral closure and a nasal airflow release. Airflow release through the nasal cavity appears to be the primary feature of nasal consonants, which facilitates coarticulatory processes such as place assimilation in pre-consonantal contexts (e.g. velarization before velar stops). The present study investigates the allophonic phonetic features of nasal + velar stop coarticulation in Spanish and Catalan. More specifically, we assessed the effects of speech rate, stress, morphological boundaries and the voicing and articulatory tension of the following stop. Electropalatographic analyses (WinEPG) were conducted on 4 repetitions of several nasal + velar stop sequences produced by 3 speakers of Spanish and 3 speakers of Catalan. The results reveal the importance of the factors investigated, in particular the voicing and articulatory tension of the following vowel. It was also shown that a slow speech rate led to hyperarticulation and the consequent frequent loss of place assimilation present in faster speech styles. These findings and the presence of certain types of partial assimilation suggest that this type of coarticulation should be treated as a gradient rather than a categorical process.