Perceptual assimilation of Mandarin Chinese consonants by native Danish listeners

Abstract

A perceptual assimilation experiment examined the cross-linguistic mapping of Mandarin Chinese initial consonants to Danish consonants. 24 native Danish listeners were auditorily presented with naturally produced CV syllables which consisted of the Mandarin initial consonants [p, ph, t, th, k, kh, x, ts, tsh, s, tɕ, tɕh, ɕ, tʂ, tʂh ʂ, ɻ, w, j] and vowels from the set [a, u, i, y] so that none of the CV syllables violated the permissible combinations of C and V in Mandarin. The Danish listeners identified the initial consonant of the stimuli with phonetically unambiguous Danish orthographic symbols and provided goodness ratings for each match. We found that assimilation patterns for Mandarin consonants differed greatly as a function of the following vowel, suggesting that native expectations regarding coarticulatory effects of V on C importantly affect perceptual assimilation. For example, Mandarin [tɕ, tɕh, ɕ] were assimilated to Danish <dj, tj, sj>, respectively, when followed by [a, y], but to Danish <t, t, s> when followed by [i]. The detailed results allow us to generate precise predictions for the discriminability and thus learnability of Mandarin consonants for native Danish listeners and learners.