The effects of native phonotactic experience, cross-language perceptual similarity, and non-native phonological merger on Mandarin speakers’ perception of Cantonese syllable-final segments

Existing studies have emphasized the important effect of native phonotactic experience and cross-language perceptual similarity on non-native speech perception, but have seldom considered this issue when the targeted non-native segments are undergoing a phonological merger. To supplement this discussion, this study investigated Mandarin Chinese (MC) speakers’ perception of syllable-final segments (⁄-р⁄, ⁄-t⁄, ⁄-k⁄, ⁄-m⁄, ⁄-n⁄, ⁄-ŋ⁄, ⁄-Ø⁄) that are undergoing a coronal-dorsal merger (⁄-t⁄↔⁄-k⁄, ⁄-n⁄↔/-ŋ/) in Hong Kong Cantonese (HKC). The HKC speakers completed an Identification Test, which confirmed the documented merger of Cantonese syllable-final segments in previous research. A Perceptual Assimilation Test and an Identification Test were prepared for MC speakers to assess their perceptual mapping and perception performance of HKC syllable-final segments. As observed, the MC speakers failed to map the merging HKC ⁄-n⁄-⁄-ŋ⁄ onto the contrastive MC ⁄-n⁄-⁄-ŋ⁄. Moreover, they perceptually collapsed the merging HKC ⁄-t⁄ and ⁄-k⁄ into one category via an illicit alteration of the place of articulation. However, neither native Mandarin phonotactic experience nor cross-MC-HKC perceptual similarity can sufficiently explain the MC speakers’ perceptual mapping and rendering of the merging HKC targets. Accordingly, the current study proposes that the non-native phonological merger has a supplemental mediating effect on non-native speech perception.