Native speakers perceive illusory vowels when presented with sound sequences that do not respect the phonotactic constraints of their language (Dupoux, Kakehi, Hirose, Pallier, & Mehler, 1999;Kabak & Idsardi, 2007). There is, however, less work on the quality of the illusory vowel. Recently, it has been claimed that the quality of the illusory vowel is also modulated by the phonology of the language, and that the phenomenon of illusory vowels can be understood as a result of the listener reverse inferring the best parse of the underlying representation given their native language phonology and the acoustics of the input stream (Durvasula & Kahng, 2015). The view predicts that listeners are likely to hear different illusory vowels in different phonological contexts. In support of this prediction, we show through two perceptual experiments that Mandarin Chinese speakers (but not American English speakers) perceive different illusory vowels in different phonotactic contexts. Specifically, when presented with phonotactically illegal alveopalatal coda consonants, Mandarin speakers perceived an illusory /i/, but in illegal alveolar stop coda contexts, they perceived a /ə/.

[Abstract not available]

The syllabic affiliation of ambisyllabic consonants (e.g., the word-medial consonants in happy and Danny) is unclear. Research on ambisyllabic consonants has revealed an inconsistent set of phonetic correlates (Krakow, 1989; Turk, 1994; Gick, 2004). While some suggest they behave as onsets or codas (but not both simultaneously), others suggest their gestural durations are intermediate between onsets/codas. At least some of the research is based on comparisons of the ambisyllabic consonants to word-edge onsets/codas. However, comparisons to word-edges are confounded by the fact that such consonants undergo domain-edge related changes (Fougeron, 2001; Keating et al., 2003b). Here, we control for this confound, and compare ambisyllabic consonants to word-medial onsets and codas. We conducted an experiment on 10 native English speakers, who produced 15 repetitions at three different speech rates of 16 English words (8 test, 8 filler) that consisted of the nasal consonants [n or m] in one of four positions: word-medial onset, word-medial coda, word-final coda, and ambisyllabic context (e.g., gamete, gamble, gam, and gamma). The results suggest: (1) Consistent with previous research, there are durational differences between word-medial and word-final nasal codas; (2) Ambisyllabic consonants clearly pattern with the word-medial nasal codas and are significantly different from the nasal onsets.

Variation in phonological adaptation has not always been analysed in detail, but some studies on Standard Mandarin (SM) loanword phonology, where a seemingly wide range of variation is present, have started to uncover cases where instances of variable adaptation are contextually conditioned (e.g. Hsieh, Kenstowicz, & Mou, 2009 on SM nasal codas; Lin 2008 on SM vowels). Our study presents corpus and experimental data in which intervocalic English nasals are variably adapted as either geminates or singletons in SM. We argue that the perceived duration and nasalization of the English prenasal vowels condition which variant is preferred in SM, and suggest how these vowel quality cues are processed and mapped onto SM phonological representation by monolingual and bilingual SM speakers. This study contributes to a better understanding of which phonetic cues modulate variation in adapted forms and how they do so.  It also showcases multiple sources for variable loanword adaptation: linguistic contexts, auditory vs. non-auditory inputs, and monolingual vs. bilingual differences.

This study investigates how English coda [m] is adapted into Standard Mandarin (SM) loanwords both in the existing corpora and in perceptual similarity adaptation data from monolingual SM and bilingual SM-English speakers. The nasal [m] in coda position is prohibited in SM. Deletion, nasal place change ([m]-->[n]/[ŋ]) and vowel epenthesis are the possible repair strategies. The generalizations identified in the corpora indicate that deletion never occurs (cf. Preservation Principle from Paradis 1996, Paradis & Lacharité 1997). Vowel epenthesis appears in SM when English coda [m] is in word-medial and word final positions. Nasal place change appears when English coda [m] is followed by a labial obstruent.  Variable adaptations happen when English coda [m] is followed by an obstruent. The experimental results show that (i) the bilingual experimental strategies for nonce word adaptations are similar to the patterns observed in the SM loanwords corpora and (ii) monolinguals’ adaptation patterns are more variable due to greater dependence on perceptual cues. The fact that monolinguals and bilinguals differ in the extent to which they employ perceptual cues and phonological features/constraints for loanword adaptations challenges a pure perception-based account of loanword adaptation.