The perception of word‐final nasals in Southern Min and Mandarin Chinese.

There is a historical pattern of word‐final nasal merger in Chinese languages. Some languages preserve the old Chinese final nasals /m, n, ŋ/, others preserve only /n, ŋ/, while others preserve only /ŋ/. The pattern of merger and loss, /m/ > /n/ > /ŋ/, may be due to a hierarchy of confusability among the nasals. Here, relative confusability of nasals was examined in identification tasks. Effects of vowel quality and lexical tone were also considered. First, perception of final nasals in the Quanzhou dialect of Southern Min, which preserves /m, n, ŋ/, found that /m/ was most often confused, while /n/ was least often confused. High vowel /i/ conditioned more mishearing than mid vowel /ə/ and low vowel /a/; low‐level tone conditioned more mishearing than high‐level, midlevel, midlow‐rising and midhigh‐falling tones. Second, perception of final nasals in Mandarin, which preserves /n, ŋ/, found that /n/ was more often confused than /ŋ/. High vowel /i/ again conditioned more mishearing than /ə/ and /a/; low‐dip...