The Development of the Nasal Vowels in the Kashubian Dialect of Strzepcz

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the development of the former nasal vowels in the Kashubian dialect of Strzepcz. Taking into consideration modern analyses of their pronunciation in other Kashubian dialects, one can assume that older descriptions are highly outdated. The paper is based on the auditory analysis of over 450 realisations of the original nasal vowels in various contexts with a support of the visual analyses of spectrograms and auxiliary acoustic measurements. There were four informants: two representing the middle generation (a man and a woman) and two (a man and a woman) from the older generation.

A synchronous nasality occurred in only 1,9% of realisations (without taking account of *[ɑ̃] at the end of the word where it is denasalized without exception) and only in the case of *[õ] in the front of fricative consonants. In 3,7% of realizations a full denasalisation was observed. In 94,4% of cases occurred an asynchronous nasality with a vowel and following nasal consonant or a glide. The vocalic (syllabic) segment is in over 80% of asynchronous realisations fully denasalised. The observed situation is diametrically different from those presented in the older descriptions. From the phonological point of view on should analyse the original nasal vowels as sequences of /V/ and underlying glide /w̃/.