Development of Mandarin Lexical Tone Production

描述（由申请人提供）：尽管声调是世界上大多数语言的重要组成部分，但由于语音资料的缺乏，声调在音系学或音系习得理论中通常被忽略。本研究通过图片命名任务考察了三岁和五岁儿童在单音节和双音节单词中普通话声调的产生。孩子和他们的照顾者的作品将被过滤，以消除词汇信息。评委将根据过滤后的语音来识别音调。儿童的准确率将与成人进行比较。声学分析将进行表征儿童的音调制作。具体目的是确定声调习得的发展里程碑，并探讨声调/语音习得可能的知觉/发音限制。这将是第一个系统地检查儿童共发音的研究，并提供儿童发音产生的声学数据。结果将扩大我们对声调发展、协同发音发展以及言语运动发展与语音发展之间关系的理解。研究结果对语音发展理论和中国儿童非典型言语发展的评价与治疗具有重要意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Due to a paucity of phonetic data, tone is usually ignored in theories of phonology or phonological acquisition although it is an essential component of the majority of the world's languages. This study examines Mandarin tone production in monosyllabic and disyllabic words by three- and five-year-old children via a picture naming task. The children's and their caregivers' productions will be filtered to eliminate lexical information. Judges will identify the tones based on the filtered speech. Children's accuracy rates will be compared to adults. Acoustic analysis will be performed to characterize children's tone productions. The specific aims are to determine developmental milestones of tone acquisition and to explore possible perceptual/articulatory constraints on tone/phonological acquisition. This will be the first study that systematically examines children's coarticulated tones and provides acoustic data on children's tone production. Results will expand our understanding of tone development, coarticulation development and the relation between speech motor development and phonological development. The findings will also have important implications for theories of phonological development and the evaluation and treatment of atypical speech development in Chinese children.