Development of Mandarin Lexical Tone Production

描述（由申请人提供）：由于语音数据的缺乏，声调通常在音系学或音系习得理论中被忽视，尽管它是世界上大多数语言的重要组成部分。本研究采用图片命名法，考察了3岁和5岁儿童汉语单音节词和双音节词的声调产生。儿童和他们的照顾者的产品将被过滤，以消除词汇信息。裁判将根据过滤后的语音识别音调。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生产。具体目标是确定声调习得的发展里程碑，并探讨可能的知觉/发音对声调/语音习得的限制。这将是第一个系统地研究儿童的共构音的音调，并提供声学数据的儿童的音调生产。研究结果将扩展我们对声调发展、协同发音发展以及语音运动发展与语音发展之间关系的认识。这些发现对语音发展理论和汉语儿童非典型言语发展的评价与治疗也有重要意义。

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.