Perception of assimilated and non-assimilated coda nasal by Japanese learners of German

This study investigates the perception of the German coda nasal contrast /n/-/m/-/ŋ/ by Japanese learners of German compared to German native speakers. The phonological distribution of coda nasals differs with/without word boundaries in the two languages. Word final coda before a pause in Japanese is neutralized to /ɴ/ but the place feature remains in German. Assimilation of coda nasals before consonants is obligatory in Japanese but not in German. Two experiments were conducted to test how syllable-final nasals with/without word boundary are perceived by Japanese speakers. The results show that Japanese listeners are sensitive to the duration of the nasal, a perceptual cue to wordfinal neutralized nasals. Durational manipulation reinforced or weakened Japanese learners' perception, suggesting that nasal assimilation is related to the length of the nasal.