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Figure 8.28: Waveform and spectrogram of possible word =>= =>= =>= =>= (Speaker K). Beginning
and end of closure are indicated by arrows.
Table 8.2 shows closure duration measurements for twelve plain voiced stops and
twelve prenasalized stops with the same places of articulation for each set. The tokens
used were possible words of the segmental frame aCa, where C is the stop being
measured.
As can be seen, there is a small increase in the duration of the closure for
prenasalized stops in comparison to plain voiced stops, an increase of about 8% on
average. However, a one-tailed t-test (Woods, Fletcher & Hughes 1986) found that this
increase was not significant (t = 1.38, p < .1).
Thus, the insignificant increase in closure duration for prenasalized stops in Mono
should not be characterized as comparable to the durational effects found in the Bantu
languages studied by Hubbard. Rather, the behavior of prenasalized stops in Mono is
more akin to that found by Maddieson for the phonologically simple Fijian prenasalized
stops. If there is indeed a mapping between phonology and phonetics such as is proposed
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