An exploration of the language independence and speaker-specificity of /m/ and /n/ in speakers of Catalan, Spanish, and English

Aim and objective: This paper investigates the language independence and speaker-specificity of the nasal consonants /m/ and /n/ in multilingual speakers. The research aims to determine how these nasal sounds manifest across different languages and whether their spectral properties − specifically the centre of gravity (COG) and standard deviation (SD) − remain consistent within individual speakers regardless of the language spoken. Methodology: Data were collected through studio recordings of read speech from nine young, balanced bilingual speakers with Catalan and Spanish as their first languages and a proficient level of English as an additional language. Data and analysis: Statistical analyses were conducted to compare the COG and SD values across languages and speakers, with the aim of measuring both within-speaker and between-speaker variability and within-speaker and between-language variability. Findings: The findings support the hypothesis that the spectral properties of /m/ and /n/ remain stable across the three languages, demonstrating low within-speaker variability. Moreover, the results confirm the speaker-specificity of these traits, as they exhibit greater variability between different speakers than within the same speaker. Consequently, these results suggest that nasal consonants are speaker-specific across multiple languages. Originality: This study provides further evidence supporting the speaker-specificity of nasal consonants in multilingual speakers. Although research areas such as forensic linguistics have examined within- and between-speaker variability in various sounds, including nasals, research remains scarce involving multilingual speakers. Implications: The research advances the fields of phonetics and multilingualism by enhancing our understanding of how linguistic and indexical information interconnect across different languages.