An EMA-Aerodynamic Approach to the Velic Opening Hypothesis: Evidence from Hindi Vowel Pairs

Some aerodynamic approaches to the estimation of velopharyngeal opening (VPO) are confounded by oral impedance, which varies with tongue height and affects nasal flow. Here the relationship between nasal flow and tongue height is investigated using a synchronized EMAaerodynamics system. A corpus of Hindi nasal and oral vowels is examined. Tongue height and nasal flow are weakly but positively correlated for nasal and oral vowels. This extremely weak correlation suggests a relatively large role for factors besides oral impedance, including VPO, in determining nasal flow. Furthermore, VPO seems to explain as much nasal flow variance for nasal vowels as it does for oral vowels. If VPO were differentially specified for nasal vowels of various phonological heights, the correlation of tongue height and nasal flow would be weaker for nasal versus oral vowels (i.e., VPO would account for more of the variance), an effect not observed here.