Planting the seed for sound change: Evidence from real-time MRI of velum kinematics in German

Velum movement signals generated from real-time magnetic resonance imaging videos of thirty-five German speakers were used to investigate the physiological conditions that might promote sound change involving development contrastive vowel nasality. The results suggest that, in comparison when a nasal consonant precedes voiced obstruent, velum gesture associated with preceding voiceless obstruent undergoes gestural rescaling and temporal rephasing. This further suggests diachronic nasality comprises two stages: first stage involves shortening realignment, while second trading relationship between source effect.