Flege J E
University of Alabama at Birmingham.
J Speech Hear Res. 1988 Dec;31(4):525-36. doi: 10.1044/jshr.3104.525.
Producing (n) requires a lingual constriction to be formed and the velopharyngeal port (VPP) to be opened. This study examined interarticulator timing in the speech of adults and children aged 5 and 10 years. A new acoustic method was developed to determine the time at which VPP opening began during vowels spoken in the context of (d-n), and VPP closing reached completion in vowels spoken in the context of (n-d). Adults and children alike nasalized most of the vowels in the (d-n) context. This suggested that the children's speech was not more "segmental" than adults'. It suggested, further, that nasalizing vowels in a (d-n) context is a natural speech process that need not be learned by young children. The children, like the adults, nasalized most of the vowels spoken in the context of (n-d). The lack of significant between-group differences, taken together with several other findings of the study, is consistent with the view that the temporal domain of carry-over nasal coarticulation is determined largely by the time needed to close the VPP (i.e., by inertial properties of the speech production mechanism).
发出（n）音需要形成舌部收缩并打开腭咽口（VPP）。本研究考察了成人以及5岁和10岁儿童言语中的发音器官协同发音时间。开发了一种新的声学方法来确定在（d-n）语境中发元音时VPP开始打开的时间，以及在（n-d）语境中发元音时VPP关闭完成的时间。成人和儿童在（d-n）语境中大多会将元音鼻音化。这表明儿童的言语并不比成人更具“片段性”。进一步表明，在（d-n）语境中使元音鼻音化是一个自然的言语过程，幼儿无需学习。儿童和成人一样，在（n-d）语境中说出的大多数元音都会鼻音化。组间缺乏显著差异，连同该研究的其他几项发现，与以下观点一致：延续性鼻音协同发音的时间域在很大程度上由关闭VPP所需的时间决定（即由言语产生机制的惯性特性决定）。
