Exploring Correlation Between Perception of Postvocalic Nasals and Production of Vowel Nasalization in English by Chinese Learners

English has three coda nasals- bilabial /m/, alveolar /n/ and velar /eta/. In Chinese languages, Southern Min also has these three coda nasals and Mandarin has two-/n/ and /eta/, while Wu has only one coda nasal-/n/ but allows allophones in terms of pre-nasal vowels. This study was designed to explore the correlation between the production of vowel nasalization and the perception of postvocalic nasals in L2 English by Chinese learners respectively with L1 in Southern Min, Mandarin and Wu. Statistical results of the perception and the production experiments found that there was no significant correlation between the identification accuracy of postvocalic nasals and the nativelikeness of vowel nasalization in English by Chinese learners with these three L1s. Further statistical analyses revealed that coda nasal type significantly predicted the identification of nasal place of articulation in the perception experiment but not vowel nasalization in the production experiment.