Doctoral Dissertation Research: Children's Acquisition of Tone Sandhi in Mandarin

当孩子们学习第一语言时，他们不仅需要弄清楚他们正在学习的语言的不同语言成分（声音结构，句子结构和单词）的属性，而且他们还需要了解这些成分如何相互作用。虽然我们对句法和音系习得的里程碑有了很好的了解，但对音系和句法之间的映射规则的习得却知之甚少。本研究旨在探讨汉语普通话中一个部分依赖句法结构信息的语音规则的习得。虽然在普通话中，可以通过4种不同的音高轮廓来区分单词，但是音调并不总是保持相同，因为它们与句法中的其他音调承载单元联合收割机组合。三声连读变调是指在同一节奏单元内，当一个三声后接另一个三声时，将一个三声变为二声的规则。虽然这条规则看起来很简单，但为了应用它，孩子们必须学会特定音节的基本音调，必须将单词联合收割机组合成层次结构（句子），然后必须在句法的输出中建立节奏单位。连读变调提供了一个独特的窗口，以确定儿童在不同发展阶段的语言生产中整合各种类型信息的能力（2至6岁）结果将提供儿童对语音和句法之间映射的初步假设的信息，并将允许在不同的话语情况下比较儿童和成人之间的差异，以确定是否成人语言中的变异对儿童产生连读变调的能力有影响。成人和儿童的实验结果将为汉语T3 S的各种理论提供一个实验基础。此外，许多中国地方方言/语言受到占主导地位的官方标准汉语（标准普通话）的严重影响，并且正在经历微妙或不那么微妙的声音变化。本研究提供的方法和协议，可以用来研究不仅是在不同的汉语方言/语言的双语/双方言儿童的变调习得，但他们的习得如何可能受到持续的社会语言学的互动和变化。我们越了解孩子是如何准确地获得语言和语法的特定方面，我们就越有可能了解儿童语言障碍可能出了什么问题，并将这些知识转移到应用和临床领域，以帮助那些有语言问题的孩子。

When children acquire their first language, they need to figure out not only the properties of the different linguistic components of the language they are acquiring (sound structure, sentence structure and words), but they also need to understand how these components interact. Although we have a good idea of the milestones in the acquisition of syntax and phonology, we know very little about the acquisition of the mapping rules between phonology and syntax. This project examines the acquisition of a phonological rule in Mandarin Chinese (called Tone 3 Sandhi) that partially depends on information from the syntactic structure. Although in Mandarin it is possible to differentiate words by 4 different pitch contours, not always the tones remain the same as they combine with other tone bearing units in the syntax. Tone 3 Sandhi is a rule that changes a tone called Tone 3 into a Tone 2 when followed by another Tone 3 within the same rhythmic unit. Although apparently simple, in order to apply this rule, children must learn the basic tones of particular syllables, must combine words into hierarchical structures (sentences) and must then build rhythmic units at the output of the syntax. Tone 3 Sandhi provides a unique window to determine children's ability to integrate various types of information in language production at different stages of development (2 to 6 year-olds) as compared to adults.The results will provide information about children's initial assumptions about the mapping between phonology and syntax and will allow a comparison between children and adults in different discourse situations in order to determine whether variation in the adult language has an effect in children's ability to produce Tone 3 Sandhi. Both the adult and child experimental results will provide a testing ground for the various theories of T3S in Mandarin Chinese. Furthermore, many Chinese local dialects/languages are heavily influenced by the dominant official Standard Chinese (Standard Mandarin) and are undergoing subtle or not so subtle sound changes. This study provides the methodology and protocol that can be used to study not only the acquisition of tone sandhi in different Chinese dialects/languages in bilingual/bidialectal children but also how their acquisition could have been affected by the on-going sociolinguistic interaction and change. The more we understand how exactly a child acquires language and particular aspects of the grammar, the more likely we can understand what might have gone wrong in child language disorders and transfer that knowledge to the applied and clinical areas to help those children with language problems.