Qaqet is a non-Austronesian Baining language of Papua New Guinea, with a very small phoneme inventory of 16 consonants and four vowels, including the voiced stops /b d ɡ/. These stops are often phonetically realized as prenasalized [^mb ⁿd ^ŋɡ], and this feature is assumed to be a result of language contact with surrounding Oceanic languages. Our data consist of isolated word recordings from six female speakers of the language. Using a range of acoustic measures, we compare these phonetically prenasalized stops with non-prenasalized tokens of the same /b d ɡ/ phonemes, and with the nasal phonemes proper /m n ŋ/, as well as with the unaspirated voiceless stops /p t k/.

In general we find that the nasal murmur of the phonetically prenasalized stop does not fully resemble the nasal murmur of the nasal consonant proper – instead the phonetically prenasalized stop patterns between the nasal consonant and the phonetically non-prenasalized voiced stop. However, there is a clear place effect, whereby the phonetically prenasalized velar stop patterns more closely with the nasal consonants, and the phonetically prenasalized bilabial stop patterns more closely with the phonetically non-prenasalized voiced stops – with phonetically prenasalized alveolar in between the bilabial and the velar. This is particularly reflected in the distribution of energy below and above about 350 Hz. However, measures of voicing strength suggest that voicing for the velar is weaker across all manners of articulation, in line with the general difficulty of maintaining voicing at this place of articulation. We conclude that prenasalization of the voiced stops largely serves to maintain voicing for the velar place of articulation; and that if the feature of prenasalization was borrowed from neighbouring languages, it was to maintain voicing for long closure durations in a true voicing language, particularly at places of articulation where maintaining voicing is difficult.

Qaqet 是巴布亚新几内亚的一种非南岛语拜宁语，仅有 16 个辅音和 4 个元音，包括浊塞音 /bd ɡ/。这些停顿通常在语音上被理解为鼻前化 [ ^m b ⁿ d ^ŋ ɡ]，并且这个特征被认为是语言与周围大洋洲语言接触的结果。我们的数据包括来自六位说该语言的女性的孤立单词录音。使用一系列声学测量，我们将这些语音前鼻化塞音与相同 /bd ɡ/ 音素的非鼻前化标记、鼻音原 /mn ŋ/ 以及不送气清塞音 /ptk/ 进行比较。

一般来说，我们发现语音前鼻塞音的鼻杂音并不完全类似于鼻辅音本身的鼻杂音——而是鼻辅音和语音非鼻前浊塞音之间的语音前鼻塞音模式。然而，有一个明显的位置效应，即语音前鼻化软颚塞音模式更接近于鼻辅音，而语音前鼻化双唇塞音模式更接近于语音非前鼻化浊塞音——语音前鼻化齿槽位于双唇和双唇之间。软膜。这特别反映在低于和高于约 350 Hz 的能量分布中。然而，发声强度的测量表明，软腭发声在所有发音方式中都较弱，符合在这个发音部位保持发声的一般困难。我们得出结论，浊塞音的前鼻化主要用于维持软颚发音部位的浊音；并且如果前鼻化的特征是从邻近的语言中借来的，那就是在真正的发声语言中长时间保持发声，特别是在难以保持发声的发音部位。