Abstract

This paper mainly focuses on the syllable-structure status of glides in the postvocalic position and also discusses the issues of the postnuclear glide as opposed to coda nasals by examining a corpus of speech errors in Mandarin spoken in Taiwan. Evidence from speech errors shows that Mandarin displays an asymmetry in the syllable structure between glides and nasals in the postvocalic position. It further suggests that the postnuclear glides are more closely affiliated with nuclear vowels than coda nasals.