Vowel nasalization does not cue ambisyllabicity in American English nasals: Evidence from nasometry

Abstract

Using visual spectrographic examination of vowel nasalization to diagnose the syllabic affiliation of phonologically ambisyllabic nasal consonants (e.g., gamma), Durvasula and Huang [(2017). Lang. Sci. 62, 17–36] argued that anticipatory vowel nasalization in these words patterns with word-medial codas. Using nasometry, the current study finds that anticipatory nasalization before monomorphemic and multimorphemic (scammer) ambisyllabic nasals differ from word-medial coda (gamble) and word-final nasals (scam), but not from other intervocalic nasals. Additionally, vowel nasalization is sensitive to the manner of the preceding phoneme. These findings demonstrate that quantifying anticipatory nasalization using nasometry differs from visual spectrographic criteria.