The voiceless nasal consonants in the Naukan language

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Abstract

This paper examines the acoustic properties of the voiceless nasal consonants [n̥ ], [m ̥ ] and [ŋ̊ ] in the Naukan language. An analysis of the scientific literature on voiceless nasal consonants in the languages of the world was carried out within the study, as well as a descriptive statistical analysis of data based on a phonetic questionnaire recorded during fieldwork in 2024. Data analysis includes the comparison of the duration of voiceless and voiced nasal consonants as a whole, voiceless components of voiceless nasal consonants, and determining the noise level of target segments using the ZCR parameter. The results of the analysis showed both the differences between the target sounds and the dependence of some parameters on the context. In the conclusion, the arguments are discussed in the context of determining the phonemic status of voiceless nasal consonants in the Naukan language.

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About the authors

Еlena М. Budyanskaya

Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Author for correspondence.
Email: budyanskaya.lena@gmail.com

Junior Researcher

Russian Federation, 1 Bld. 1 Bolshoy Kislovsky Lane, Moscow, 125009

Darya О. Zhornik

Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: daria.zhornik@yandex.ru

Researcher

Russian Federation, 1 Bld. 1 Bolshoy Kislovsky Lane, Moscow, 125009

Тimofey V. Kornev

Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Email: t.kornev@iling-ran.ru

Junior Researcher

Russian Federation, 1 Bld. 1 Bolshoy Kislovsky Lane, Moscow, 125009

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2. Fig. 1. Spectrogram and intensity contours of air flows recorded at the mouth (blue line) and at the nose (red line) for the word qiqm̥iʁaq ‘dog’

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