nasalisation
Noun: 1. The act or process of making a sound nasal: The articulation of a speech sound so that air escapes through the nose, often by lowering the soft palate (velum). 2. The utterance of sounds modulated by the nasal resonators: The quality given to a sound when it is produced with the nasal passage open and acting as a resonator.
Nasalisation is a technical term used primarily in phonetics and linguistics. It describes a specific articulatory process or the acoustic result of that process. * It is often discussed in the context of languages where nasalisation is a distinctive feature that changes word meaning (e.g., French, Portuguese). * It can also occur as a co-articulatory effect, where a sound becomes nasalized because it is next to a nasal consonant like /m/, /n/, or /ŋ/.
- In French, the nasalisation of vowels is phonemic, distinguishing words like [bɔ̃] (good) from [bo] (beautiful).
- The nasalisation of the vowel in the English word 'can't' is a common feature of many accents, contrasting with the oral vowel in 'cat'.
- Linguists study the degree of nasalisation in different dialects.
- Contextual/Assimilatory Nasalisation: This occurs when a normally non-nasal sound becomes nasalized due to the influence of a neighboring nasal sound. For example, the vowel in the English word 'man' [mæ̃n] often has some degree of nasalisation because it is between two nasal consonants.
- Phonemic vs. Allophonic Nasalisation: In phonology, a distinction is made between nasalisation that creates a new phoneme (phonemic, as in French) and nasalisation that is a predictable variant of an existing sound (allophonic, as in the English example above).
- Nasalize (verb): To produce (a speech sound) with nasalisation.
- Some speakers nasalize the vowels before nasal consonants.
- Nasal (adjective): Relating to the nose; or (in phonetics) describing a sound, like /m/ or /n/, produced with a complete oral closure and open nasal passage.
- Denasalisation (noun): The loss or absence of nasal quality in a sound.
- Nasal utterance
- Nasal resonance (specifically refers to the acoustic effect)
- The spelling nasalization (with a 'z') is the standard form in American English, while nasalisation (with an 's') is common in British English. Both refer to the same concept.
- This term is almost exclusively used in academic or technical discussions about language and speech.
- the act of nasalizing; the utterance of sounds modulated by the nasal resonators