A phonological asymmetry and its perceptual consequence: The case of the velar nasal onset

Abstract

The perception of nasal consonants in onset and coda position by native English and Cantonese speakers was investigated. English exhibits a three-way nasal place contrast in coda position (/m, n, ■/) but only a two-way contrast in onset (/m, n/). Cantonese shows the three-way contrast in both positions. Previous perceptual investigation into the English asymmetry found that the [n]-[■] contrast in onset position was difficult to discriminate for native English speakers. [Larkey et al., Percept. Psychophys. 23(4), 299–312 (1978)]. The present study investigated this asymmetry using real-speech stimuli in a cross-language experiment. In an AXB task (where same pairs were different tokens from the same place category and different pairs were tokens from different categories), both English (n=12) and Cantonese (n=6) listeners accurately discriminated all three nasal place contrasts in coda position. Crucially, Cantonese listeners accurately discriminated the [n]-[■] contrast in onsets (95% correct) while English listeners were less successful (69% correct). The results are interpreted as a perceptual consequence of the asymmetry of nasal place in English, where the lack of a phonological contrast diminishes its discrimination. Future work will extend these findings to an investigation of the development of nasal place discrimination in infancy.