Gestural coordination of Brazilian Portugese nasal vowels in CV syllables: A real-time MRI study

The coordination of velum and lingual gestures for Brazilian Portuguese nasal vowels in CV syllables is studied with real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rt-MRI). Four syllable structures were compared: stop-oral vowel, stop-nasal vowel, nasal-oral vowel, nasal-nasal vowel. Results show near-synchrony timing (in-phase) for the consonant onset and nasal vowel’s lingual onset, and for the consonant release and velum onset in the stop-nasal vowel syllable structure. The other syllabic structures present nearsynchrony timing (in-phase) for all their gesture’s onsets.