Breathy voice during nasality: A cross-linguistic study

- A correspondence between nasal and breathy sounds is attested in some sound changes.
- We hypothesize that nasalized vowels and sonorants have breathier voice quality than their oral counterparts.
- We test this using electroglottography in three Yi languages.
- We find that nasals are often breathier than non-nasals.
- We discuss findings in terms of listener misperception and phonetic enhancement in sound change.

In some languages, there is a diachronic correspondence between nasal and breathy sounds, whose origin is often attributed to the acoustic similarities between nasal and breathy vowels. In this study, we test whether nasal consonants and vowels are also produced with breathier voice quality than their oral counterparts in three Yi (Loloish) languages: Bo, Luchun Hani, and Southern Yi. We analyzed oral vs. nasal vowels and consonants using electroglottographic and acoustic measures of phonation. Results indicate that nasal consonants are often breathier than laterals, as are vowels following nasals when compared to vowels following oral consonants. These findings support the assumption that at least some of these nasal-breathy sound changes involve a stage in which the two articulations co-occur. We claim that the production of breathy voice quality during nasals can arise through listener misperception or phonetic enhancement. These findings also contribute to the understanding of nasality as an abstract feature that involves multiple articulations.