Ambisyllabicity revisited: An acoustic study of intervocalic nasals in American English

• 발행기관: 경희대학교 언어정보연구소
• 저자명: Joo-Kyeong Lee
• 간행물 정보: 『언어연구』제43권 제2호, 475~496쪽, 전체 22쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 언어학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2026.06.30

국문 초록

The phonetic status of ambisyllabic consonants in English has long been debated, yet previous studies on intervocalic nasals have rarely established clear or robust phonetic correlates of ambisyllabicity, largely due to methodological limitations and restricted coverage of intervocalic configurations. The present study addresses this limitation by providing a comprehensive acoustic investigation of ambisyllabic nasal consonants in American English. Specifically, we examine intervocalic [m] and [n] across three logically distinct contexts: ambisyllabic nasals preceded by stressed lax vowels, non-ambisyllabic intervocalic nasals preceded by stressed tense vowels, and non-ambisyllabic intervocalic nasals followed by stressed vowels. Ten native speakers of English produced target words embedded in a carrier sentence, yielding 1,500 tokens for analysis. Using A1-P0, the amplitude difference between the first formant and the nasal pole as an acoustic measure of vowel nasality, the results show that ambisyllabic nasals do not pattern with either word-initial onset or word-final coda nasals. Instead, they exhibit acoustic properties closely resembling those of non-ambisyllabic intervocalic nasals preceded by stressed tense vowels, a pattern that is consistent with Kahn’s notion of ambisyllabicity.

목차

1. Introduction

2. Experiment

3. Discussion

4. Conclusion

References

키워드

ambisyllabic nasals A1-P0 nasalization

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