Coda Nasal Perception in Wenzhou Wu and Rugao Mandarin by Native Speakers of Standard Mandarin

Abstract

Different from Standard Mandarin, which has both alveolar coda nasal /n/ and velar coda nasal /ŋ/, Wenzhou Wu has only /ŋ/ as nasal coda and Rugao Mandarin has coda /ŋ/ and nasal vowels. This study investigates how northern Mandarin listeners, who speak Standard Mandarin as native language, identify coda nasals in Wenzhou Wu and Rugao Mandarin produced by three age groups via forced-choice identification tasks. Results indicate that the identification of nasal place of articulation varied across prenasal vowels, age groups, and lexical tones. Nasals after the vowels /o, a, e/ in Wenzhou Wu were mostly identified as /ŋ/, whereas nasals in Rugao Mandarin were identified as /ŋ/ only after /ɔ/ and in nasal vowels /ʊ̃, ã/, but mainly as /n/ in nasal vowels /ẽ, ĩ/. The /ŋ/ responses for the nasal after Ruago /ə/ were around the chance, significantly varying across age groups. Younger and mid-age Wenzhou speakers’ production of /aN/, and younger Rugao speakers’ production of /ʊ̃/ and /əN/ yielded more /ŋ/ responses than older speakers’. Tones with a relatively low pitch ending, such as /aN/ with tone 42 in Wenzhou Wu and /ʊ̃, ã/ with tone 21 in Rugao Mandarin resulted in more responses of /n/ than other tones.