The statement that laterals and nasals exhibit distinct acoustic properties is a foundational fact of phonetics and speech acoustics, requiring no citation.
The claim states that laterals (such as [l]) and nasals (such as [m] or [n]) have distinct acoustic properties, which follows directly from their different articulatory mechanisms (oral lateral airflow vs. nasal resonance). This is a well-established, elementary fact of phonetics and everyday linguistic observation (Common Knowledge). Therefore, no specific source citations are needed, and STEP 0 applies to classify the claim as common knowledge.