Disyllabic words

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

lower frequency in all participants‟ production.

4.3.1.2 Disyllabic words

In this section, syllable types in different syllable position of disyllabic words and the preferred syllable combination were analyzed. The syllable-initial position in the disyllabic words is referred to as 1st syllable and the syllable-final position is represented as 2nd syllable in Table 4.8.

Table 4.8 and Figure 4.3 present the tokens and frequencies of syllable types in disyllabic words. The results in first syllable are statistically significant (χ²11,0.001=318.4, p<.001). The results in second syllable are also statistically significant (χ²11,0.001=212.2, p<.001).

Table 4.8 Tokens and percentages of syllable types in disyllabic words

1st syllable V CV VG VN GV CVG CVN GVG GVN CGV CGVG CGVN

Tokens 255 2122 11 21 182 473 154 3 19 448 70 50

Percentages 6.7% 55.7% 0.3% 0.6% 4.8% 12.4% 4% 0.07

%

0.5% 11.8% 1.8% 1.3%

Total tokens 3808

2^nd syllable V CV VG VN GV CVG CVN GVG GVN CGV CGVG CGVN

Tokens 134 1760 13 15 224 499 173 185 21 513 118 153

Percentages 3.5% 46.2% 0.3% 0.4% 5.8% 13.1% 4.5% 4.9% 0.8% 13.5% 3.1% 4%

Total tokens 3808

‧

Figure 4.3 Percentages of syllable types in disyllabic words

In Figure 4.3, the bars on the left named 1st syllable show all syllable types‟

frequencies of the first syllable in disyllabic words, and those named 2nd syllable in the right represent the frequencies of the second syllable in disyllabic words.

Frequency of each syllable type would be calculated separately as different categories, but they were put together in the same graph for easier comparison.

Figure 4.3 shows that CV, CVG, CGV had the highest frequency in both first syllable and second syllable in disyllabic words, among which CV was the most frequently used syllable types, accounted for 55.7 and 46.2 percent of the production in first and second syllable respectively. The frequency of CV was three times higher than other syllable types. The frequencies of syllable types in disyllabic words were similar to the results in monosyllabic words, in which CV, CVG, and CGV were also the most frequently used syllable types. The ranking of frequencies of syllable types is

6.7%

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

CV> CVG, CGV> GV, V in disyllabic words.

For the least frequent syllable types, VG, VN, and GVN had frequency less than one percentage. The frequency of GVG was also less than one percent in first syllable, but reached 4.9% in second syllable. Words children produced contained GVG syllable were mostly [pu35 jɑw51] „no‟, so the production of GVG was mostly limited to second syllable, resulting in its lower frequency in first syllable.

Comparing the frequencies of syllable types between different syllable positions, the results show that all syllable types appeared in the second syllable more frequently than in first syllable except for CV, V, and VN. Furthermore, half of the syllable types appeared less than 4% in first syllable. Table 4.9 and Table 4.10 present the frequencies of syllable types of each participant in first and second syllable of disyllabic words.

Table 4.9 Percentages of syllable types of each participant in 1^st syllable

V VG VN CV CVG CVN CGV GV GVG GVN CGVG CGVN

#1 4.9% 0% 0.1% 61.6% 11.4% 1% 8.4% 10.6% 0.2% 0.2% 1% 0.6%

#2 7.8% 0.6% 0.5% 49.6% 15.8% 8.4% 10.3% 3.2% 0.1% 0.5% 1.9% 1.2%

#3 7.3% 0% 0.8% 57.9% 9.9% 3.7% 11.2% 4.2% 0% 0.7% 2.3% 1.9%

#4 7.4% 0% 0.5% 53.3% 10% 0.5% 26.7% 0.7% 0% 0% 0.9% 0%

#5 8.3% 0.8% 0.8% 46.3% 17.9% 10.1% 6% 2.5% 0% 1.5% 2.3% 3.5%

#6 4.3% 1% 1% 62% 11.7% 0.7% 13.7% 1.7% 0% 0% 3.3% 0.7%

‧

Table 4.10 Percentages of syllable types of each participant in 2^nd syllable

V VG VN CV CVG CVN CGV GV GVG GVN CGVG CGVN and CGV were the most frequently used syllable types produced by all participants in both syllable positions.

There were in a total number of 3808 disyllabic tokens in the data, and among which, there were 95 types of different syllable combinations in the data (see appendix A). Table 4.11 shows the frequencies of syllable combinations that ranked first five in disyllabic words.

Table 4.11 The overall frequencies of syllable combinations Syllable combination Token Percentage

CV-CV 1417 37.2%

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

The top five frequencies of syllable combinations were accounted for 59.5% of the total syllable combination. CV-CV, CGV-CGV, and CVG-CVG were the top three combinations that were used by participants. CV-CV was most frequently used syllable combination, accounted for 37.2%, and the rest of combinations were accounted for more than 3.5%.

The results shows that syllable combinations that showed higher frequency are those with consonant-vowel reduplicated forms, such as CV-CV, CGV-CGV, and CVG-CVG. Furthermore, the syllable types that composed the top five frequencies of syllable combinations are those with higher frequency in both first syllable and second syllable in disyllabic words, as shown in Figure 4.3.

The frequencies of syllable combination of each participant were also calculated (see Appendix B). Participant #2 produced the largest amount of different types of combination. She produced 69 types of different syllable combination, and participant

#6 only produced 36 types of different syllable combination. The following table shows the top five frequencies of syllable combination of each participant.

Table 4.12 The frequencies of syllable combinations of each participant Participant #1

Syllable combination Token Percentage

CV-CV 427 46.2%

GV-GV 84 9.1%

CVG-CVG 77 8.3%

CV-CVG 47 5.1%

‧

‧

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

Base on Table 4.12, the top five frequencies of syllable combinations of all participants were accounted for more than 45% of their utterances. The top five frequencies of combinations produced by participant #4 were even accounted for 90%

of her utterances.

CV-CV was the most frequent combination of all participants. The percentages of CV-CV were much higher than other combinations produced by all participants.

CGV-CGV was appeared in the top-five list of all participants except for participant

#5, and CVG-CVG was also appeared in the list except for participant #2.