Prosodic conditioning of Portuguese subjects ’ perception of vowel nasality

We examine the sensitivity of Portuguese subjects to a series of prosodic parameters previously shown to condition perception of vowel nasality, hypothesizing that the presence in Portuguese of long, strongly nasal vowels would (i) provoke lower nasality ratings than observed in English and French subjects and (ii) make these insensitive to prosodic parameters under investigation. (i) but not (ii) is confirmed. The results show some language-specificity but subjects were sensitive to all the parameters in question, confirming their robustness