Nasals between vowels

As we saw, the transition into syllable-final nasals is not a mirror image of the transition out of nasals into vowels. When between vowels, the entry into the nasal portion tends to be quicker than syllable final, which means that there is shorter (and less) nasalization than we saw earlier.

Figure 9.5 is a spectrogram of a female RP speaker saying ‘the more (he blew)’  .

As can be seen from the diminution in amplitude in the latter portion of ‘the’, nasality increases slowly, but then the amplitude drops abruptly once the bilabial closure is made, and the transition out of the vocal portion into the nasal one is more abrupt and obvious than in the case of ‘hang’ earlier. As the nasal is released, there is a spike corresponding to the opening of the lips, which can be seen at the boundary between the segments labelled [m] and [ore].