Nasal Heads or Nasal Tails? A Pan Lusophone Survey of Preconsonantal Murmur

This study investigates nasal murmur in preconsonantal environments across Portuguese varieties from Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. We analyzed cross-syllable tokens of the type nasal vowel (Vn) + stop (Cs) or fricative (Cf) to: compare the presence or absence of nasal murmur (N) across pan Lusophone varieties, and examine the acoustic length of N, alone and as a proportion of the total period of nasality expressed in the syllable rhyme. Our findings show significantly fewer instances of N among Brazilian speakers in Vn + Cs contexts. Temporal results, and to a lesser extent the distribution of N in Vn + Cf contexts set apart Brazilian and European varieties from the African and Asian varieties. We conclude by suggesting that dominant variety influence and substratum interference lie behind some of these differences, yielding in an expanded context for the realization of N, and transfer of the nasality locus from Vn to N among indigenizing varieties.