Graduate Institute of Linguistics, Neurobiology and Cognitive Science Center, National Taiwan University, Taiwan.
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan.
Lang Speech. 2021 Dec;64(4):771-789. doi: 10.1177/0023830920948084. Epub 2020 Dec 10.
Syllable-final nasals /n/ and /ŋ/ in Taiwan Mandarin have been reported to be undergoing merging. Perceptual studies have reported that the alleged merging is context-sensitive and the merging directions are vowel-dependent. These findings have been mostly attributed to dialectal and social factors. The current study uses ultrasonography to capture postures of the entire tongue during the production of syllable-final nasals. The results, though confirming previous findings that the merging directions of syllable-final nasals are vowel-dependent, are best accounted for by the biomechanics of the tongue, as supported by computational 3D model simulations. Furthermore, for some speakers, although nasals were merged in terms of tongue posture, the degrees of nasalization of the preceding vowel were contrastive, suggesting that the merging process may be incomplete.
台湾普通话中，音节末尾的鼻音/n/和/ŋ/ 据称正在合并。感知研究报告称，这种所谓的合并是语境敏感的，并且合并方向是元音依赖的。这些发现主要归因于方言和社会因素。本研究使用超声技术来捕捉音节末尾鼻音发音过程中整个舌头的姿势。尽管这些结果证实了之前的研究发现，即音节末尾鼻音的合并方向是元音依赖的，但它们最能被舌头的生物力学所解释，这一观点得到了计算 3D 模型模拟的支持。此外，对于一些说话者来说，尽管在舌位方面鼻音发生了合并，但前面元音的鼻音程度是有区别的，这表明合并过程可能不完全。
