Production of Mandarin Chinese Nasal Coda by L1 and L2 Speakers of Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

The current study addressed to what extent the murmur and vowel make contribution to the place of articulation distinction in Mandarin Chinese nasal codas. Ten speakers of Mandarin in Taiwan and ten speakers of Burmese who learned Chinese as a second language (CSL) participated in the present research. They articulated the alveolar-velar nasal pairs (i.e. [-n] vs. [-η]) embedded in three vowel contexts ([i], [ə], [a]) with the rising tone. Nasal production of each subject was examined from the perspective of four acoustic cues, including formant transition in vowels, degrees of nasalization, vowel duration, and nasal murmur duration. Results revealed that the spectral difference and nasalization play important roles in the Mandarin syllable-final nasal contrasts. Speakers of Mandarin in Taiwan significantly distinguished the [an]-[aη] pair in formant transition and nasalization, but failed in the other pairs ([in]-[iη], [ən]-[əη]). This finding to some extent reflected the nasal merging in Mandarin production in Taiwan. Though endowed with a more marked L1 nasal system, CSL learners from Burma merged Mandarin nasal codas to a greater degree. Their confusion in producing Mandarin nasals was a major result from the merging nasals of the target language.