Which term describes the sound produced when air comes through the nose?

• A. Phonology
• B. Nasalization
• C. Early multiword stage
• D. Question Mark

Answer: (B)

Nasalization is the term that describes the nasal quality of a sound produced when air comes through the nose. This happens when the velum lowers, allowing air to resonate in the nasal cavity, which you hear in sounds that accompany nasal consonants or in nasalized vowels in some languages. In practice, you can notice nasalization in vowels that occur before a nasal like “an” or in languages with nasal vowels, and it’s often marked in phonetic transcription with a tilde over the vowel. The other options don’t describe a sound property: phonology is the study of how sounds are organized in a language, the early multiword stage refers to a developmental phase in child language, and a question mark isn’t a linguistic term.