Perceptual and Quantitative Analysis of Mandarin Loanword Phonology: Focusing on English Coda Nasal /m/ Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

Crosslinguistically, loanword adaptation processes tend to align with phonotactic constraints, yet mismatches are also observed. At English coda, there are /m/, /n/, and /N/, while only /n/ and /N/ are allowed at Mandarin coda. The discussion on the adaptation of English coda nasal /m/ into Mandarin has primarily focused on the prenasal vowel quality, but the role of postnasal consonant features is less explored (Heish et al., 2008, Huang & Lin, 2016). This study examines whether postnasal consonant features complement prenasal vowels in explaining the adaptation process, while also investigating the potential interplay of other phonological, prosodic, and morphological factors in this process. Using a forced-choice paradigm, the study evaluates 105 English words with /Vm(C)/ sequences to determine the relative likelihood of two adaptation strategies—Vowel Epenthesis (VE) and Nasal Switch (NS)—with 10 bilingual Mandarin-English speakers. In this context, Vowel Epenthesis (VE) refers to listeners adapting /m/ by inserting an epenthesized vowel after /m/, whereas Nasal Switch (NS) involves replacing /m/ with /n/ or /N/, which are phonemes available in Mandarin. The findings indicate that both prenasal vowels and postnasal consonants are critical in shaping phonological cues. Longer prenasal vowels and tense vowels are associated with increased Vowel Epenthesis, aligning with Mandarin’s prosodic requirements for syllable timing. Conversely, bilabial postnasal consonants show a stronger tendency for Nasal Switch. Morphological boundaries also play a role, with increased favor of VE often used to take the morphological and mental division of a word into phonology. To analyze these effects, a Logistic Regression model was employed, incorporating six identified variables and their interactions. The results show that local phonological cues, such as the bilabialness and voicing of the immediate postnasal consonant, have stronger effects than prosodic or other non-phonological cues at the word level. Importantly, the study refines prior hypotheses that Vowel Epenthesis may only happen for /m/+[-labial] to /m/+[-bilabial]. These findings demonstrate that listeners weigh both local and word-level cues, balancing immediate cues with overarching linguistic structures. In this process, speakers rely on multiple cues rather than a single factor when adapting foreign phonology.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Determinants of Loanword Adaptation 3

2.1 Phonemic Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2.2 Syllable structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2.3 Prosodic Feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.4 Orthography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3 Mandarin 5

4 Methodology 7

4.1 The Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

4.2 The Stimuli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

4.3 The Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4.4 The Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

5 Results

10

5.1 Postnasal consonant quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

5.1.1 Postnasal consonant being [+labial] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

5.1.2 Postnasal Consonant being [+voice] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5.2 Prenasal Vowel Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5.2.1 General Prenasal Vowel Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

5.2.2 Tenseness and Laxness of the Prenasal Vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

5.2.3 Frontness of the vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

5.3 Syllabic Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

5.3.1 Syllable Counts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

5.3.2 Balancing Syllabic Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

5.4 Linguistic Boundary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

5.4.1 Morphological Boundary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

5.4.2 Syllabic Boundary (Postnasal consonant in the onset of the following

syllable) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

5.5 Orthography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

5.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

5.7 Modelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

6 Conclusion and Discussion 28

6.1 Hypothesized Outcomes and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

6.2 Future Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

7 Conclusion 30

About this Honors Thesis

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Emory College
Department	Linguistics
Degree	B.S.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Language, Linguistics
Keyword	Loanword Phonology Phonology Linguistics Perception Mandarin
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Yun Kim, Emory University
Committee Members	Hiram Maxim, Emory University Weihua An, Emory University

Last modified

Primary PDF

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions
	File download under embargo until 08 January 2026	2024-12-11 11:18:23 -0500	File download under embargo until 08 January 2026

Supplemental Files

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions