Data to: Vowel nasalization and the path to sound change: an MRI study of American and Southern British English /nt, nd/. Language, 101

A central task in sound change research is to account for the emergence of new phonological categories from patterns of synchronic phonetic variation. To this end, a comparison was made of two English dialects differing in their phonologization of coarticulatory vowel nasalization using real-time magnetic resonance imaging of the velum and tongue and their synchronization with the glottal signal. This was done for coda vowel-nasal (VN) sequences preceding voiced and voiceless stops. The results showed that a later phasing of N’s oral gesture and an earlier onset of aperiodicity in the nasal consonant were two of the main physiological factors likely to lead to sound change in voiceless VNC̥ clusters. They were also consistent with models of compensatory lengthening by which the vowel is lengthened and the oral gesture of the nasal consonant is shortened as sound change progresses.

The datasets were created as part of the project SoundAct which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 101053194).

Data to:
Harrington, J., Cunha, C., Voit, D., Frahm, J., & Hoole, P. (2025). “Additional materials to Vowel nasalization and the path to sound change: an MRI study of American and Southern British English /nt, nd/”, Language, 101.

Further publications:
Greca, P., Gubian, M. & Harrington, J., (2024) “The relationship between the coarticulatory source and effect in sound change: evidence from Italo-Romance metaphony in the Lausberg area”, Laboratory Phonology 15(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/labphon.9228