Velar Movements for Two French Speakers

This study compares velar movements for nasal vowels and consonants; it investigates contextual nasalisation; and it provides new data on how nasalisation is affected by speech rate. Velar position is measured with an electromagnetic articulatograph (EMA) for two French speakers. Our results confirm that (i) nasal vowels are produced with a lower velum height than nasal consonants; (ii) the contrast between nasal and oral vowels is maintained in nasal context; (iii) velum height targets for nasal and oral segments show some overlap, especially sequences of nasal consonant + oral vowels or [l, ]; and (iv) nasal vowels have a relatively longer duration which is preserved under rapid speech rate.