Proceedings

Cue Integration in Mandarin Adaptation of English Coda /m/: Probabilistic and Perceptual Patterns

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Abstract

This study examines how Mandarin listeners choose between vowel epenthesis (VE) and nasal switch (NS) when adapting English words with coda /m/, and what this reveals about cue integration in loanword adaptation. Building on prior accounts that appeal to a broad [±labial] context and to prenasal vowel quality, we test how segmental and structural cues jointly shape repair choices in a larger and more varied stimulus set. Using 105 English items, nine Mandarin–English bilinguals completed two perception-based adaptation tasks, and responses were analyzed with mixed-effects logistic regression. The results show that listeners rely on multiple cues rather than a single categorical repair, with consonantal properties in the post-/m/ environment, prenasal vowel cues, and word-level structure each contributing to the probability of VE versus NS. While nasal duration emerges as a strong predictor, it does not by itself capture the full distribution of responses across contexts and tasks. Instead, the fitted model indicates that adaptation choices reflect how several local and non-local cues pattern together in the input, with listeners relying more on the local cues and less on the word-level ones. More generally, these findings support a cue-integration view in which phonetic information alone is insufficient to explain variable nasal adaptation, and listeners combine multiple sources of evidence when mapping non-native coda /m/ onto the Mandarin.

 

Keywords: Loanword phonology, Cue integration, Speech perception, Mandarin

How to Cite:

Zhang, X., (2026) “Cue Integration in Mandarin Adaptation of English Coda /m/: Probabilistic and Perceptual Patterns”, Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology 2(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/amphonology.3696