Abstract
This is the first study to examine the effect of phonetic contexts on children’s lexical tone production. Mandarin tones in disyllabic words produced by forty-four 2- to 6-year-old children and twelve mothers were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information. Native Mandarin-speaking adults categorized the tones based on the pitch information in the filtered stimuli. All mothers’ tones were categorized with ceiling accuracy. Counter to the findings in most previous studies on children’s tone acquisition and the prevailing assumption in models of speech development that children acquire suprasegmental features much earlier than segmental features, this study found that children as old as six years of age have not mastered the production of Mandarin tones. Children’s tones were judged with significantly lower accuracy than mothers’ productions. Tone accuracy improved, while cross subject variability in tone accuracy decreased, with age. Children’s tone accuracy was affected by the articulatory complexity of phonetic contexts. Children made more errors in tone combinations with more complex fundamental frequency (F0) contours than tone sequences with simpler F0 changes. When producing disyllabic tone sequences with complex F0 contours, children tended to shift the F0 contour of the first tone to reduce the F0 change, resulting in more tone errors in the first syllable than in the second syllable and showing substantially more anticipatory coarticulation than adults. The results provide further evidence that acquisition of lexical tones is a protracted process in children. Tones produced accurately by children in one phonetic context may not be produced correctly in another phonetic context. Children demonstrate more anticipatory coarticulation in their disyllabic productions than adults, which may be attributed to children’s immature speech motor control in tone production, and is presumably a by-product of their inability to accomplish complex F0 changes within the syllable time-frame.
Highlights
Many of the world’s languages use lexical tones to convey semantic contrasts
This study examined whether pre-school children have mastered the production of the four Mandarin tones in coarticulated disyllabic words and whether their tone accuracy is affected by different tone combinations
Counter to findings in early studies claiming that lexical tones are acquired well before segmental production is mastered, results of the present investigation confirm the findings in recent studies on monosyllabic Mandarin tone productions that acquisition of Mandarin lexical tone is a lengthy and gradual process that spans more than five years
Summary
Studies that examined children’s acquisition of Mandarin tones yielded contradictory results; some studies reported that children acquire the four tones as early as one-and-a-half years of age [1, 2], well before they master the correct productions of vowels and consonants, while other studies reported that even five-year-old children have not mastered the production of tones [3]. Most of these studies examined children’s acquisition of monosyllabic lexical tones. This study examined whether pre-school children have mastered the production of the four Mandarin tones in coarticulated disyllabic words and whether their tone accuracy is affected by different tone combinations
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
