Perceptual confusability of final nasals in Southern Min.

Abstract

The three syllable-final nasals /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ in old Chinese have merged into two (/n, ŋ/) or only one (/ŋ/) nasal in modern Chinese languages. The perceptual confusability of place of articulation was investigated with speakers of Southern Min, a Chinese language which preserves all three final nasals. Three experiments of forced-choice nasal-identification were conducted: (1) complete CVN syllables embedded in noise, (2) CV-truncations of the CVN syllables, and (3) the excised nasal murmur, −N. The first experiment revealed that /m/ was the most and /n/ was the least confusable. Responses were highly accurate in the second experiment (above 85%) and around chance in the third experiment (below 40%), which indicated that listeners relied on the information in the vowel rather than the nasal murmur to identify final nasals. The vowel /i/ resulted in the most and /a/ the least misidentification of final nasals among /i, ə, a/. Low-level and falling tones resulted in more misidentification of final nasals than mid-level, high-level, and rising tones. Segment duration, F0, and formant transitions are analyzed across the vowel and tone types for insight into these findings. Lexical familiarity ratings did not show significant correlation with the perceptual results.