Abstract
This study aims at investigating the patterns of coarticulatory nasalization in (1) monosyllables and, more importantly, (2) weak elements (affixes, clitics, etc.) in Taiwanese Southern Min. As a baseline, we firstly conducted a more comprehensive airflow study of nasalization in monosyllables (cf. Hsieh 2011, Hsieh et al. 2011) and the principal findings are that nasalization of weak elements (i.e., the so-called “diminutive suffix” –a, or the “genitive marker” –e) is implemented differently. Precisely, the weak elements under investigation (CVN-VWeak elements) are more nasalized if compared with their counterparts in compounds or phrases (in the CVN.NV and CV.NV formats). It is also found that these weak elements are shorter in the duration of the consonant interludes, yielding a non-phonemic three-way contrast between geminates (CVN.NV; compounds), “derived” geminates (CVN-VWeak elements) and “singletons” (CV.NV). Taken together, the major contribution of the present study is that weak elements, or, better known as “non-prominent,” “unstressed” elements, may be phonetically realized distinctively by means of a higher degree of nasalization, in addition to the well-established characteristics such as lower pitch, lower loudness and shorter segmental duration.