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In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are, and, in words such as nose, bring and mouth. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages.
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics that studies articulation and ways that humans produce speech. Articulatory phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures. Generally, articulatory phonetics is concerned with the transformation of aerodynamic energy into acoustic energy. Aerodynamic energy refers to the airflow through the vocal tract. Its potential form is air pressure; its kinetic form is the actual dynamic airflow. Acoustic energy is variation in the air pressure that can be represented as sound waves, which are then perceived by the human auditory system as sound.
The uvula, also known as the palatine uvula, is a conic projection from the back edge of the middle of the soft palate, composed of connective tissue containing a number of racemose glands, and some muscular fibers. It also contains many serous glands, which produce thin saliva. It is only found in humans.
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the active articulator and passive articulator. Standard Spanish ⟨rr⟩ as in perro, for example, is an alveolar trill.
An oral consonant is a consonant sound in speech that is made by allowing air to escape from the mouth, as opposed to the nose, as in a nasal consonant. To create an intended oral consonant sound, the entire mouth plays a role in modifying the air's passageway. This rapid modification of the air passageway using the tongue and lips makes changes to the waveform of the sound by compressing and expanding the air. In addition to the nose and mouth, the vocal cords and lungs also make a contribution to producing speech by controlling the volume (amplitude) and pitch (frequency) of the sound. The use of the vocal cords will also determine whether the consonant is voiced or voiceless. The vast majority of consonants are oral, such as, for example, , and. The others are nasal, such as the nasal occlusives or.
Before there appeared the consonantal opposition nasal/oral, consonant was distinguished from vowel as closed tract from open tract. Once the nasal consonant has been opposed to the oral as presence to absence of the open tract, the contrast consonant/vowel is revalued as presence vs. absence of a closed tract.
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is.
Augmentation pharyngoplasty is a kind of plastic surgery for the pharynx when the tissue at the back of the mouth is not able to close properly. It is typically used to correct speech problems in children with cleft palate. It may also be used to correct problems from a tonsillectomy or because of degenerative diseases. After the surgery, patients have an easier time pronouncing certain sounds, such as 'p' and 't', and the voice may have a less nasal sound.
Velopharyngeal inadequacy is a malfunction of a velopharyngeal mechanism which is responsible for directing the transmission of sound energy and air pressure in both the oral cavity and the nasal cavity. When this mechanism is impaired in some way, the valve does not fully close, and a condition known as 'velopharyngeal inadequacy' can develop. VPI can either be congenital or acquired later in life.
A palatal obturator is a prosthesis that totally occludes an opening such as an oronasal fistula. They are similar to dental retainers, but without the front wire. Palatal obturators are typically short-term prosthetics used to close defects of the hard/soft palate that may affect speech production or cause nasal regurgitation during feeding. Following surgery, there may remain a residual orinasal opening on the palate, alveolar ridge, or vestibule of the larynx. A palatal obturator may be used to compensate for hypernasality and to aid in speech therapy targeting correction of compensatory articulation caused by the cleft palate. In simpler terms, a palatal obturator covers any fistulas in the roof of the mouth that lead to the nasal cavity, providing the wearer with a plastic/acrylic, removable roof of the mouth, which aids in speech, eating, and proper air flow.
Pharyngeal flap surgery is a procedure to correct the airflow during speech. The procedure is common among people with cleft palate and some types of dysarthria.
Velopharyngeal insufficiency is a disorder of structure that causes a failure of the velum to close against the posterior pharyngeal wall during speech in order to close off the nose during oral speech production. This is important because speech requires sound and airflow to be directed into the oral cavity (mouth) for the production of all speech sound with the exception of nasal sounds. If complete closure does not occur during speech, this can cause hypernasality and/or audible nasal emission during speech. In addition, there may be inadequate airflow to produce most consonants, making them sound weak or omitted.
Nasalance is a measure of the degree of velopharyngeal opening in voiced speech formed by computing the ratio of the amplitude of the acoustic energy at the nares, An, to amplitude of the acoustic energy at the mouth, Am. The term nasalance usually refers to this ratio as a percentage,
Nasal emission is the abnormal passing of oral air through a cleft palate, or from some other type of velopharyngeal inadequacy (VPI), during the production of a consonant that requires a buildup of oral air pressure for proper pronunciation, such as /p/ or /s/. The escaping air tends to reduce the oral air pressure and impede the proper production of the consonant. Secondary effects sometimes noted with nasal emission are the development of improper compensatory pronunciation habits, including using a very soft voice that uses less breath pressure. Nasal emission can be detected by a number of simple techniques, such as looking for the fogging of a mirror held under the nares or measured more definitively by means of a nasal pneumotachograph
Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination:
Estill Voice Training is a program for developing vocal skills based on analysing the process of vocal production into control of specific structures in the vocal mechanism. By acquiring the ability to consciously move each structure the potential for controlled change of voice quality is increased.
Hypernasal speech is a disorder that causes abnormal resonance in a human's voice due to increased airflow through the nose during speech. It is caused by an open nasal cavity resulting from an incomplete closure of the soft palate and/or velopharyngeal sphincter. In normal speech, nasality is referred to as nasalization and is a linguistic category that can apply to vowels or consonants in a specific language. The primary underlying physical variable determining the degree of nasality in normal speech is the opening and closing of a velopharyngeal passage way between the oral vocal tract and the nasal vocal tract. In the normal vocal tract anatomy, this opening is controlled by lowering and raising the velum or soft palate, to open or close, respectively, the velopharyngeal passageway.
In speech pathology and medicine, nasoendoscopy is the endoscopic examination of the velopharynx, or the nose, often with a CCD camera or a fiber optic camera on a flexible tube passed through the nostril. It can provide information to evaluate speech and velopharyngeal function or dysfunction, as in diseases such as sinonasal carcinomas.
A velar click, or more precisely a back-released velar click or back-released uvular click, is a click consonant found in paralinguistic use in languages across Africa, such as Wolof. The tongue is in a similar position to other click articulations, such as an alveolar click, and like other clicks, the airstream mechanism is lingual. However, unlike other clicks, the salient sound is produced by releasing the rear closure of the tongue rather than the front closure. Consequently, the air that fills the vacuum comes from behind the tongue, from the nasal cavity and the throat. Velar clicks are always voiceless and typically nasal, as nasal airflow is required for a reasonably loud production.
A velopharyngeal fricative, also known as a posterior nasal fricative, is a sound produced by some children with speech disorders, including some with a cleft palate, as a substitute for sibilants, which cannot be produced with a cleft palate. It results from "the approximation but inadequate closure of the upper border of the velum and the posterior pharyngeal wall." To produce a velopharyngeal fricative, the soft palate approaches the pharyngeal wall and narrows the velopharyngeal port, such that the restricted port creates fricative turbulence in air forced through it into the nasal cavity. The articulation may be aided by a posterior positioning of the tongue and may involve velar flutter.
References
- ↑ R.J. Baken, Robert F. Orlikoff. Clinical Measurement of Speech and Voice San Diego: Singular, 2000