Speed of velum movement during nasal segments and rest intervals: A cineradiographic study of French and English speech

While opening/closing of the velopharyngeal port (VPP) in speech has been much studied, the speed of these movements has been largely overlooked. The present study compares opening/closing velocities of the VPP in French and English, testing relation to distance traveled and speech-related versus physiological movements. Running speech samples from nine Quebecois French speakers and four Canadian English speakers were obtained from the Université Laval X-ray videofluorography database [Munhall et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 98 (2), 1222–1224 (1995)]. Using ImageJ software, we tracked VPP opening/closing movements during two types of events: phonologically nasal segments and rest intervals between chunks of speech. We calculated velocity of VPP opening/closing during these events and analyzed the data using linear mixed-effects models to identify differences between the nasals and rest intervals as well as for any cross-linguistic differences. Results indicated that: (1) VPP closure was faster following English nasals than French nasals; (2) VPP opening was faster than closure for rest intervals in French; and (3) VPP opening/closing speeds were faster coming into/out of rest position than into/out of nasals in French. Preliminary cross-language observations support a correspondence between velocity and distance. [Work supported by NIH and NSERC.]