Production of stop consonants in 3-to-6-year-old Mandarin-speaking children

Abstract

The present study compared the temporal measurements of stop consonants in 29 3-to-6-year-old Mandarin-speaking children and 12 Mandarin-speaking adults. Each participant produced 18 Mandarin disyllabic words which contained six stops /p, pʰ, t, tʰ, k, kʰ/ each followed by three vowels /a, i, u/, respectively. All stop consonants were located at the word-initial position in the first syllable. The temporal measurements of VOT, overall burst duration, average duration per burst, the number of burst and VOT-lag duration were obtained. The results showed that Mandarin-speaking children in this age range produced all six stops, especially aspirated stops, with longer VOT means than the adults. The older children produced even longer VOTs than the younger children, which evidenced the overshooting pattern of VOT values in children. Although adult-like short-lag VOTs for unaspirated stops were achieved in all children, the long-lag VOTs for aspirated stops were widespread in the younger group and gradually developed to a concentrated distribution in the older children. Further examination of the burst and VOT-lag revealed that these children tended to produce shorter average duration per burst and longer VOT-lag than the adults for both unaspirated and aspirated stops. These results indicate that children in this age range may not have developed adult-like laryngeal-oral timing pattern and airflow control for stop production.