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

• DOI: 10.1353/lan.2021.0020
• Publication Date: 2021-06-20T13:00:27Z
• Authors: Christopher Carignan; Stefano Coretta; Jens Frahm; Jonathan Harrington; Phil Hoole; Arun Joseph; Esther Kunay; Dirk Voit
• Keywords: Obstruent; Nasality; Sound change

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.