Patterns of syllable deletion in syllable positions

國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

similar patterns. The frequency rankings for child #1 and child #4 are CV > V > CVN.

The other two children showed similar patterns: CV is the most frequently used type, and is then followed by CGV and V. For the less frequently used syllable types, GVG and GVN have relatively low frequencies among all syllable types. Child #3 and child

#4 did not even produce these two types. Moreover, the frequencies of VN, CVG and CVN were also low in the production of child #2. It seemed that there were slightly different syllable patterns produced by the young children.

In conclusion, CV is the most frequently used syllable type in deleted multisyllabic words. The unmarked syllable CV is obviously the most frequently used type for the four children to produce since they would tend to omit the segment in complex syllable types to become simple syllable types as simplification strategies.

4.3 Patterns of syllable deletion in syllable positions

According to the previous sections revealing the different frequencies of syllable types, the rankings of overall syllable types and syllable deletion types show slightly different patterns, but CV still has the highest frequency of all the utterances.

However, when we carefully investigated every syllable deletion of the children’s utterances, we found that four children would reduce the segments in every syllable position. No vowel reduction occurred because the nucleus is obligatory in every syllable whereas the initial, the medial and the ending are all optional in Mandarin.

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In order to examine whether the syllable positions affect the syllable deletion, we analyzed the syllable positions of each syllable in the children’s production. In this study, the glides [j] and [w] are of primary interest since the glide [ɥ] did not always appear in children’s production system. During the observation, there are three categories of syllable positions (initial, middle and final positions) and three categories of syllable structures (C, N and G). The tokens and percentages of deletion in different syllable positions are shown in the following Table 4.15. Furthermore, the bar graph in Figure 4.7 compares the difference of the deletion in each syllable position.

Table 4.15 Patterns of syllable deletion in different positions Initial

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Figure 4.7 Percentages of syllable deletion in different positions

Based on Table 4.15 and Figure 4.7, we can see that children tended to produce the reduced syllable forms, especially the deletion of the postnuclear glide [w] and the final nasal [n]/ [ŋ]. The deletion of the posnuclear glide [w] has the highest percentage of all deletion categories with 27.5%, and is followed by nasals (N) in syllable-final position, which account for 25.7%. This indicated that children frequently omitted the segments which were the glide [w] and the nasal in the syllable-final position. Besides, the deletion of the initial consonant ranks as the third most frequently used deletion category with 18.5%.

However, the deletion of prenuclear glides [j] and [w] makes up the smallest percentage of all deletion categories with 7.8% and 9.6% respectively. In terms of syllable positions, the children were less likely to drop the segments in the prenuclear position or syllable-initial position. Moreover, the deletion of prenulcear and

18.5%

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postnuclear glides [j] has a lower frequency in the children’s productions, as compared to the glides [w]. We can see that the children had a tendency to omit the postnuclear glide [w] while keeping the glide [j] in their young productions.

In order to see whether there were individual differences between the participants, the frequencies of deletion patterns produced by each child were also calculated and analyzed, and this is shown in Table 4.16 and Figure 4.8.

Table 4.16 Percentages of syllable deletion patterns of each child Initial

Figure 4.8 Percentages of syllable deletion patterns of each child

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‧ 國

立 政 治 大 學

‧

N a tio na

l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y

Based on Table 4.16 and Figure 4.8, the frequencies of each deletion pattern are calculated separately as different categories, but are put together in the same graph for easier comparison. It can be clearly seen that the four children had a tendency to delete segments in every syllable position. The patterns of the three children’s deletion are similar. Child #2, child #3 and child #4 were strongly likely to omit the glide [w] occurring in the syllable-final positions in their speech productions. The pattern of the postnuclear glide [w] has the highest frequency with around 30%. The deletion of final nasal [n]/ [ŋ] ranks as the second frequently used pattern in the children’s productions.

However, child #1 presented a slightly different pattern compared to the other children. She preferred the deletion of consonants in the syllable-initial positon, with a usage of 44.9% of all categories, and then followed by the deletion of final nasals and the prenuclear glide [j] coming in at 19.7% and 19.3% each. Hence, according to the syllable positions, the deletion of glide ([j] and [w]) shows a higher percentage in initial positions, and the deletion of prenuclear glide [w] occurs more frequently.

Accordingly, the four children would delete the different segments in every syllable position. It is interesting to note that the children had slightly different syllable deletion patterns in their immature language stages. Three children preferred the deletion of the postnuclear glide [w] and the final nasals [n] and [ŋ] while the

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fourth tended to produce the deletion of initial consonant and the final nasals [n] and [ŋ]. Although the presented results indicated that the four children’s syllable deletion

patterns were exhibited differently, they still tended to drop the segments in their early stages of speech development.