Acoustic analysis of simple vowels preceding a nasal in Standard Chinese

The aims of this study are (1) to determine the acoustic pattern signaling that a syllable in Standard Chinese, SC, contains a nasal coda, and (2) specify the acoustic attributes that distinguish between the two places of articulation for a nasal coda. The "rst syllable in SC disyllabic words with simple vowels [a], [i], and [ə] was examined in di!erent contexts: (1) vowel with a nasal coda [n] or [F] followed by a syllable beginning with a stop or vowel, and (2) vowel without a nasal coda followed by a syllable beginning with a stop or [n]. It was found that a nasal coda can be detected by the presence of a vowel}nasal consonant boundary using the maximum "rst di!erence of the "rst four formant amplitudes or by the amount of vowel nasalization using the time contours of normalized A1!P0 and A1!P1 (amplitude di!erences between the "rst formant and nasal peaks). The places of articulation of nasal codas can be distinguished by the formant frequencies in the vowel and by acoustic attributes at the vowel}nasal consonant boundary. ( 2000 Academic Press