The Typology of Nasal Onsets Across Chinese Dialects

This study examines the typology of nasal onset consonants across 201 Chinese dialects, focusing on their nasal inventories and nasal place contrasts in two vowel contexts [_i] vs. [_a]. The results show an average of 3.129 nasals per dialect, with [m] [ŋ] [n] as the most frequently observed. In terms of nasal inventory, [m n ŋ] turns out to be the most frequent, followed by [m n/ɲ ŋ]. In terms of place contrasts, the [_a] context is generally more likely to allow nasals at different places than the [_i] context. A further examination on the phonotactics confirms that nasals are more likely to be combined with a rime [a] than [i], with the exception of [n/ɲ].