Phonetic Evidence for the Nasal Coda Shift in Mandarin

Abstract

This paper presents phonetic evidence to resolve the transcription disagreement concerning the syllable-final nasal shift in the variety of Mandarin spoken in Taiwan. In the word reading experiment, three judges agreed that the rhyme /iŋ/ undergoes a sound change, but they perceived the nasal coda shift differently. Two of them transcribed it as a modification from /iŋ/ to /in/, whereas the other asserted that the velar nasal disappears with its preceding vowel nasalized. In order to resolve this transcription conflict, this study analyzes the acoustic attributes of the speculative sound alterations in question, including /in/, /iŋ/, /i/ and /ĩ/. The phonetic analysis indicates that the Taiwanese participants do not nasalize the preceding vowel deleting the nasal coda but they tend to pronounce the post-vocalic velar nasal as its dental counterpart. This study concludes by discussing the implications of the synchronic variation for the theories of the nasal coda shift in Chinese dialects.