Doctoral Dissertation Research: Production of Monosyllabic and Disyllabic Tones by Mandarin-Speaking Children

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，黄佩珊女士将在中国进行一项论文项目，在Winifred Strange博士的指导下，调查学龄前儿童对普通话词汇音调的产生。声调是世界上大多数语言的重要组成部分，然而人们对儿童声调的发展却知之甚少。因此，声调在语音发展理论中往往被忽视。普通话有四个声调，每个声调都有不同的音高轮廓，用来区分单词。在较长的单词和连续的讲话中，音调改变了它们的结构，这种现象被称为协同发音。黄女士之前对在美国长大的中国儿童的研究表明，3岁的孩子仍然没有掌握所有四个音调的产生，即使是单音节单词。问题仍然存在，是否暴露于英语可能会延迟这些孩子的发展普通话tongers.This论文项目将提供一个基线的声调发展的儿童谁生活在一个完全讲普通话的环境中，并扩展了以前的研究，问孩子如何产生音调在较长的话语，协同发音改变的音高轮廓的结构。这些发现将有助于建立中国儿童语音发展的里程碑，这将是重要的评估和治疗语音障碍的汉语儿童生活在美国。这些结果也将有助于我们对儿童语音发展的生理和/或感知限制的基本理解。该项目将促进中国和美国研究人员之间的科学合作。

With support from the National Science Foundation, Ms. Puisan Wong will carry out a dissertation project in China to investigate preschool-aged children's production of Mandarin lexical tones, under the direction of Dr. Winifred Strange. Lexical tone is an essential component in most of the world's languages; however, little is known about children's development of tone. Therefore, tone is usually neglected in theories of phonological development. Mandarin has four lexical tones; each tone is manifested by a different pitch contour and is used to differentiate words. In longer words and continuous speech, the tones change their structure, a phenomenon referred to as co-articulation. Ms. Wong's previous research on Chinese children growing up in the USA as Mandarin speakers showed that 3-year-olds had still not mastered the production of all four tones even in one-syllable words. Questions remain about whether exposure to English might have delayed these children's development of Mandarin tones.This dissertation project will provide a baseline for tone development by children who live in a completely Mandarin-speaking environment, and extend the previous study to ask how children produce tones in longer utterances where coarticulation changes the structure of the pitch contours. The findings will help establish the milestones of phonological development in Chinese children, which will be important in the evaluation and treatment of phonological disorders in Chinese-speaking children living in the USA. The results will also contribute to our basic understanding of physiological and/or perceptual constraints on phonological development in children. The project will foster scientific collaboration between researchers in China and the USA.