台灣華語正常及構音異常幼童之習得現象:滑音產製研究 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學語言學研究所碩士論文. National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of Linguistics Master Thesis. 政治大 Advisor: Dr. I-Ping Wan. 指導教授：萬依萍博士. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Nat. sit. y. 台灣華語正常及構音異常幼童之習得現象:滑音產製研究. n. al. i n U. The Status of Glides. Ch. engchi. er. io. Phonological Development and Disorder in Taiwan Mandarin:. 研究生：許馨云撰 Student : Hsin-Yun Hsu 中華民國一〇五年六月 June, 2016. v.

(2) Phonological Development and Disorder in Taiwan Mandarin:. The Status of Glides. BY. 立. 政治大 Hsin-Yun Hsu. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Nat. Graduate Institute of Linguistics. n. al. er. io. sit. y. A Thesis Submitted to the. in Partial Fulfillment of the. Ch. i n U. v. Requirements for the Degree of. i eMaster n g cofhArts. June 2016.

(3) The members ofthe Committee approve the thesis of Hsin-Yun Hsu Defended on June 23th, 2016. 。. 乙. 匕，兀¤ã。一. 乙. 9 I-PingWan(St e^) Advisor. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. \ Chia-LingHsieh(t 圭玲) Committee Member. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 疾肛拐. Li-HsinNing(f #J#). Committee Member. 夕. Amoved 。"' "@一@一. Hsun-Huei Chang (jHHUIjIIOj Director, Graduate Institute of Linguistics. ，丁， @t 夕.

(4) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. Copyright © 2016 Hsin-Yun Hsu All Rights Reserved iii. v.

(5) 致謝詞. 回首在政大語言所三年來奮鬥的點點滴滴，有相當多的回憶及感激，尤其論文將近完成之際，愈是會回想起剛開始摸索的過程。一本論文的誕生，不是單靠一個人自己的力量就可完成。首先，我要感謝我的指導教授萬依萍老師，感謝老師在論文撰寫的過程中不斷地指引我方向，逐字逐句地修改我的內文，並且花時間與我討論，在我口試緊張焦慮時，也不時地幫我加油打氣，給我信心。同時也很感謝美麗又溫柔的甯俐馨老師和謝佳玲老師擔任我論文的口試委員，針對我的論文給我相當多的回饋和建議，真的很謝謝老師們細心和耐心地指導。. 政治大. 在研究所就讀的三年期間，感謝每一位教導過我的教授們。謝謝為教室帶來歡. 立. 樂的蕭宇超老師，幽默風趣又瀟灑的何萬順老師，如同仙女下凡般的黃瓊之老. ‧ 國. 學. 師，冰山美人徐嘉慧老師，和藹可親的張郇慧所長，謝謝各位老師帶我們探索語言學各個領域的奧妙，讓我對語言學的各領域有更多的理解。. ‧. 另外我要感謝三年來跟我一起奮鬥的同學們，在每一次一起修課的過程中都充. Nat. sit. y. 滿歡笑和活力。感謝大學時期跟我一起奮鬥的戰友旻欣，熱心助人常常提供給. io. er. 大家許多資訊，跟你一起騎車上學的日子真的超級開心，也感謝直腸直肚的曉婷，每次跟你聊天都好好笑，還有最可靠神人唐馬克，總是給我帶來無盡歡笑. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. 和學術上的建議，另外還有外務超多跨領域的楊媜媞，跟我一起在語音實驗室. engchi. 奮鬥的庭瑄和欣瑩，感謝你們這麼罩，互相幫忙，提供各方面的意見，最後要特別感謝在我論文統計上給我強力協助的孟璋學長，謙虛卻又實力堅強。. 最後，我要感謝從小扶養我長大的阿公阿嬤和在求學路上一路支持我的父母，以及在我生活崩潰時給予我精神上陪伴的姐姐和妹妹，沒有你們在我背後做我的強力後盾，我的研究生活沒辦法這麼順利完成。另外也要感謝 Logan So 在碩三這一年給我加油打氣，以及資料分析上的莫大的幫助，有你們的陪伴，我感到無比幸運!. 2016/7/14 iv.

(6) Table of content Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Segmental acquisition of glides ....................................................................... 2 1.2 The phonetic and phonemic approaches .......................................................... 5 1.3 Phonologically-disordered children ................................................................. 7 1.4 Research questions ........................................................................................... 9 1.5 The framework of this study .......................................................................... 11 Chapter 2 Literature review ......................................................................................... 13. 政治大. 2.1 Phonological development of glides .............................................................. 13 2.1.1 Glides acquisition of normally and phonologically-disordered. 立. children…………………………………………………………….…...….14. ‧ 國. 學. 2.1.2 Glide development in Mandarin children ........................................... 24 2.2 An introduction to Mandarin .......................................................................... 29. ‧. 2.2.1 Mandarin consonants and vowels ....................................................... 29 2.2.2 Phonological accounts on Mandarin glides ........................................ 33. Nat. sit. y. 2.2.3 Phonotactic of glide sequences ...........................................................36. io. er. 2.3 Phonological acquisition theories ..................................................................41 2.3.1 Markedness theory .............................................................................. 41. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. 2.3.2 Positional effect and positional prominence hierarchy.......................44. engchi. Chapter 3 Methodology ............................................................................................... 48 3.1 Data collection ............................................................................................... 49 3.1.1 Participants .......................................................................................... 50 3.1.2 Data collecting procedures .................................................................. 52 3.1.3 Recording apparatus............................................................................ 53 3.2 Data analysis .................................................................................................. 54 3.2.1 Transcription & Coding ...................................................................... 55 3.2.2 Criteria for data selection .................................................................... 57 3.2.3 Glide emergence and stabilization assessment ................................... 58 Chapter 4 Findings and analysis .................................................................................. 61 4.1 Emergence of glides in normally-developing group ...................................... 61 v.

(7) 4.2 Stabilization of glides in normally-developing group.................................... 64 4.2.1 Data and PCC/PCE ............................................................................. 64 4.2.2 Order of stabilization of glides ........................................................... 85 4.3 Glide performance of the phonologically-disordered group .......................... 92 4.4 Phonological processes and patterns .............................................................. 95 4.4.1 Tokens of Phonological Processes ...................................................... 95 4.4.2 Percentages of phonological processes ............................................. 100 Chapter 5 Discussion ................................................................................................. 103 5.1 Summary of the study .................................................................................. 103. 政治大. 5.2 Interaction of markedness and positional prominence hierarchy ................ 104 5.2.1 Markedness and positional prominence hierarchy in glide. 立. emergence ...………………………………………………………….….... …..104. ‧ 國. 學. 5.2.2 Markedness and positional prominence hierarchy in glide stabilization …………………….…………………………………… .. ….…...106. ‧. 5.3 Comparison of glide performance in the two groups................................... 109 5.3.1 Glide performance in the two groups................................................ 110. Nat. sit. y. 5.3.2 phonological processes in the two groups ........................................113. io. er. 5.4 Concluding remarks .....................................................................................114 References .................................................................................................................. 118. n. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v.

(8) List of Tables. Table 2.1 An overview of studies on English glide phonemes (Dodd et al., 2003) .... 14 Table 2.2 Mandarin consonants ................................................................................... 30 Table 2.3 Standard Chinese Vowels ............................................................................ 31 Table 2.4 Mandarin surface vowel phones .................................................................. 31 Table 2.5 Vowel phones in Taiwan Mandarin (Wan & Jaeger, 2003) ......................... 32. 治政 Table 2.6 Syllable types concerning glide positions大 in Mandarin ............................... 37 立 ‧ 國. 學. Table 2.7 Possible co-occurrence of vowels and glides (Wan & Jaeger, 2003) .......... 39 Table 2.8 Possible CG sequences (* indicates the CG sequence is not possible) (Wan,. ‧. 2003) .................................................................................................................... 40. y. Nat. io. sit. Table 3.1 Participants’ background information ......................................................... 51. er. Table 3.2 Coding samples for normally-developing group ......................................... 55. al. n. v i n Table 4.1 Age of emergenceC of glides ......................................................................... 62 hengchi U Table 4.2 Age of emergence of glides (NN) ................................................................ 63 Table 4.3 Glide distribution and PCC/PCE of the normally-developing group .......... 65 Table 4.4 Total distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 0;10-2;0) of WW .............. 67 Table 4.5 Total distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 0;9-2;4) of NN .................. 68 Table 4.6 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;1) WW ................................... 69 Table 4.7 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;2) WW ................................... 69 Table 4.8 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;3) WW ................................... 70 vii.

(9) Table 4.9 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;4) WW ................................... 70 Table 4.11 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;6) WW.................................. 72 Table 4.12 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;7) WW ................................. 72 Table 4.13 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;8) WW ................................. 72 Table 4.14 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;9) WW ................................. 73 Table 4.15 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;10) WW ............................... 73. 政治大 Table 4.17 Distribution立 and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;0) WW ................................. 74 Table 4.16 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;11) WW ............................... 73. ‧ 國. 學. Table 4.18 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;1) WW ................................. 74 Table 4.19 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;2) WW ................................. 74. ‧. Table 4.20 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;3) WW ................................. 75. sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. Table 4.22 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;5) WW ................................. 75. v. n. Table 4.23 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 0;9) NN ................................... 78. Ch. engchi. i n U. Table 4.24 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 0;10) NN ................................. 78 Table 4.25 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 0;11) NN ................................. 79 Table 4.26 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;0) NN ................................... 79 Table 4.27 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;1) NN ................................... 79 Table 4.28 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;2) NN ................................... 80 Table 4.29 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;3) NN ................................... 80 Table 4.30 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;4) NN ................................... 80 viii.

(10) Table 4.31 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;5) NN ................................... 81 Table 4.32 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;6) NN ................................... 81 Table 4.33 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;7) NN ................................... 81 Table 4.34 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;8) NN ................................... 82 Table 4.35 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;9) NN ................................... 82 Table 4.36 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;10) NN ................................. 82. 政治大 Table 4.38 Distribution立 and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;0) NN ................................... 83 Table 4.37 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 1;11) NN ................................. 83. ‧ 國. 學. Table 4.39 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;1) NN ................................... 83 Table 4.40 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;2) NN ................................... 84. ‧. Table 4.41 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;3) NN ................................... 84. sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. Table 4.42 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 2;4) NN ................................... 84. v. n. Table 4.43 Age of stabilization of glides in relation to three positions (WW) ............ 90. Ch. engchi. i n U. Table 4.44 Age of stabilization of glides in relation to three positions (NN) .............. 91 Table 4.45 Distribution and PCC/PCE of glides in phonologically-disordered group92 Table 4.46 Total distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 4;3-4;9) of LL ................. 93 Table 4.47 Total distribution and PCC/PCE of glides (age 3;10-4;3) of HH .............. 94 Table 4.48 Numbers of phonological processes in normally-developing group ......... 97 Table 4.49 Numbers of phonological processes in WW ............................................. 98 Table 4.50 Numbers of phonological processes in NN ............................................... 98 ix.

(11) Table 4.52 Numbers of phonological processes in LL ................................................ 99 Table 4.53 Numbers of phonological processes in HH ............................................. 100 Table 4.54 Percentages of phonological processes in normally-developing group .. 100 Table 4.55 Percentages of phonological processes in phonologically-disordered group .................................................................................................................. 101 Table 5.1 PCC of glides in the two groups ................................................................ 111. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. x. i n U. v.

(12) List of Figures. Figure 5.1 Glide development of WW ........................................................................ 89 Figure 5.2 Glide development of NN.......................................................................... 89. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. xi. i n U. v.

(13) 國. 立. 政. 治. 大. 學. 研. 究. 所. 碩. 士. 論. 文. 提. 要. 研究所別：語言學研究所. 論文名稱：台灣華語正常及構音異常幼童之習得現象:滑音產製研究. 指導教授：萬依萍博士. 研究生：許馨云. 政治大論文提要內容：（共一冊，22,658 字，分五章）立. ‧ 國. 學. 本篇論文檢視台灣華語為母語之正常幼童以及構音異常幼童之滑音[j], [w], [ɥ]發展與產製表現，採長期觀察之方式，詳細描述正常幼兒滑音產製之出. ‧. 現及穩定年齡、頻率、正確率和發展順序，並且比較此三滑音於各音節位置之產製表現，進而比較兩組幼童之台灣華語滑音產製及音韻歷程之使用行為。本. Nat. sit. y. 研究以標記理論及位置層級理論來檢驗幼兒滑音之發展與表現。. io. er. 本研究總共觀察了四位幼童，將其分為兩組，第一組為兩位正常幼童，年齡在九個月至二十八個月和十個月至二十九個月，為期十九個月的觀察，另一. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. 組為兩位構音異常幼童，年齡在三歲十個月至四歲三個月和四歲三個月至四歲. engchi. 九個月，為期六個月的觀察。每兩週收錄一次長達一小時之語料，並利用錄製之高規格影音檔做譯寫及分析。研究結果顯示，正常幼兒之滑音出現順序和穩定順序皆符合標記理論之預測，無標音早於有標音，其滑音產製之穩定度與音節位置相關，音節首位之滑音表現較音節中與音節末之滑音表現來的穩定，這與位置層級理論之推測相符合。構音異常幼童組中發現了有別於正常幼童之特殊取代模式，由較晚習得語音取代較早習得語音，其所產製的語音中會違反華語的音法限制。音韻歷程之表現在兩組幼童中皆偵測到刪除、換位、取代三種模式，其中皆以刪除為主要策略。關鍵詞:滑音習得、標記理論、位置層級理論、台灣華語 xii.

(14) Abstract The purpose of the present study is to report the developmental process of three Mandarin glides [w, j, ɥ] in terms of three word positions by examining the age of emergence and stabilization, the order of stabilization, and accuracy rate of the children’s production, and further compare the normative data with phonological disorder data in order to explore the possible phonological processes. This study also accounts for the developmental process of glides on the basis of markedness theory and positional prominence hierarchy.. 政治大. A longitudinal study was carried out for the investigation of two normally-developing children, aged between 0;9-2;4 and 0;10-2;4, and two. 立. phonologically-disordered children, one of whom is between 4;3 and 4;9, and the. ‧ 國. 學. other between 3;10 and 4;3. The data were collected at two-week intervals. The results showed that the order of glide emergence and stabilization of the. ‧. normally-developing group is in accordance with the markedness theory. The unmarked [j], [w] precede marked [ɥ]. Moreover, the stabilization order of the three. Nat. sit. y. glides in terms of the three syllable positions was found to reflect the interaction. io. er. between markedness constraint and positional prominence hierarchy. The unmarked glide in the initial position is the first to stabilize and the marked glide in the. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. non-initial position is the last to stabilize. On the other hand, the children in the. engchi. phonologically-disordered group were found to consistently replace the presumably earlier-developing glide with a presumably later-developing one, which differs from the process used in the normally-developing group. Furthermore, this group of children produced the combination that violates the phonotactic constraints of Taiwan Mandarin. In addition, there are three phonological processes, including deletion, metathesis, and substitution detected in children’s data. The most commonly used process is deletion in both groups of children.. Keywords: glide development, markedness, positional prominence hierarchy, Taiwan Mandarin xiii.

(15) Chapter 1. Introduction. The phonological acquisition of consonants in young children has been well. studied. cross-linguistically through. different. approaches.. Researchers. have. investigated the phonological development of young children for a long period of. 政治大 time so as to uncover the universal tendencies and language-specific patterns. The 立. ‧ 國. 學. findings reported were mostly in accord with Jakobson’s proposals (1914/1968) on. ‧. the universal patterns of phonemic acquisition, suggesting that phonological. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. development follows the universal patterns across languages. The early sounds. v. n. acquired are the unmarked forms and unmarked features, which include nasals, stops,. Ch. engchi. i n U. and front consonants. Jakobson’s theory of phonological development seems to be. based on the presumption that all the phonemes were acquired in all positions. simultaneously, regardless of the positional differences. The phonological. development of English phones in relation to word positions was described in. Stoel-Gammon (1985). The results were found to accord with Jakobson’s.. 1.

(16) In addition, the fact that positional factor plays a vital role in sound production. has been supported by both internal and external evidence. The syllable initial. position is considered to be more prominent than other positions, and therefore, is. more resistant to sound change whereas the coda position is later acquired since it. involves a more complex syllable structure and is less prominent compared to the. 政治大. initial position (Demuth et al., 2006; Kirk & Demuth, 2006; Jiménez & Lloret; 2013).. 立. Furthermore, the fact that the different articulatory gestures and timing involved in the. ‧ 國. 學. same segment in different positions might increase the difficulty of the production is. ‧. attested in previous research (Krakow, 1989; Gick; 2003; Kochetov, 2006).. sit. y. Nat. er. io. 1.1 Segmental acquisition of glides. al. n. v i n Regarding the development [j] in English, previous studies C h of glides [w] and engchi U conducting cross-sectional studies suggested that the labiovelar phoneme /w/ was. acquired before the palatal glide /j/. The /w/ was acquired at around 3-year-old and /j/. at around 4-year-old (Wellman et al., 1931; Poole, 1934; Templin, 1957; Smit, 1990).. However, other researchers suggested the opposite order. The findings in Prather’s. (1975) study, an opposite order on the acquisition of /w/ and /j/ was found, suggesting. 2.

(17) that the palatal /j/ was acquired prior to the labiovelar /w/. Furthermore, the study. showed that the subjects acquired both /w/ and /j/ phoneme at a relatively young age. (before 3-year old) comparing to the others. The gender differences were found in Smit’s (1990), suggesting that girls acquired the /j/ sound by 4 years old, but the boys. did not acquire the /j/ sound until they reached the age of 5. On the other hand, the. 政治大. longitudinal studies of a simple case or a small number of children indicated that the. 立. labiovelar glide [w] occurred before two-year-old while the [j] sound did not appear. ‧ 國. 學. before age two. Moreover, the sounds in the initial position are the most stable. ‧. whereas the glides in word-medial positions are prone to errors (Smith, 1973;. sit. y. Nat. er. io. Stoel-Gammon; 1985).. al. n. v i n Glides [j, w, ɥ] in Mandarin of three high vowels /i, u, y/ C h are allophonic variants engchi U that are allowed to occur syllable-initially, after the initial consonant, and. syllable-finally, forming initial consonants, prenuclear glides, and postnuclear glides.. Among the three glides, only the labiopalatal glide [ɥ] does not occur in postnuclear. position. The status of the prenuclear glides has long been an interest of several. studies in terms of syllable structure (Lin, 1989, 1990; Bao, 1990; Duanmu, 1990;. 3.

(18) Wan, 1997, 2003; Wang & Chang, 2001). Although the status of glides caused a lot of. debates in Mandarin, the development of glides could only be found in few studies.. Previous research accounted for Mandarin glide development in terms of diphthongs. and triphthongs in vowel development. The results showed that the high front. unrounded [i] was acquired error-free and relatively early and the high front rounded. 政治大. [y] and high back rounded [u] vowels were later acquired (Li, 1977; Jeng, 1979; Su,. 立. 1985). Lin and Lin (1993) suggested that Mandarin vowels, including diphthongs and. ‧ 國. 學. triphthongs, were acquired before 3-year-old in Taiwan, except for the high front. ‧. rounded vowel [y]. They reported children did not master the high front rounded. sit. y. Nat. er. io. vowel [y] until the age of 3;5. Moreover, diphthongs were found to reduce to simple. al. n. v i n vowels by dropping the onglide the most sonorant vowel C h and offglide, retaining engchi U within a sequence (Li, 1977; Jeng, 1979; Su, 1985, Zhu, 2000). However, the. development of Mandarin glides was concerned in the development of vowel. combinations, and therefore the behavior and development of Mandarin three glides [w, j, ɥ] in terms of three positions are not thoroughly inspected.. 4.

(19) 1.2 The phonetic and phonemic approaches. Psychologists and linguists have examined the patterns and sequences of child. phonological acquisition for several decades, in hopes of unveiling the mystery of the. language behavior and the complicated mechanisms involved in learning processes of. human beings. In terms of speech production, there are two common ways, including. 政治大. phonetic and phonological analyses. A phonetic analysis which describes phones with. 立. regard to articulatory, acoustic, and auditory focuses on physical movements involved. ‧ 國. 學. in the production of speech, physical properties, and speech perception of listeners,. ‧. while a phonological analysis is concerned with the classification and organization of. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. phonemes of a given language and dedicated to investigating the inventory of. Ch. phonemes and their patterns of occurrence. engchi. v i n (Stoel-Gammom U. and Dunn, 1985;. Ladefoged and Johnson, 2014). Dodd et al. (2003) as well pointed out the two-way. distinctions in relation to the discussion of sound acquisition, including a phonetic. approach and a phonemic approach. The phonetic approach focuses on the speech. sound production, which refers to articulatory and motor skills involving production. process whereas the phonemic approach examines functions, behaviors, and. 5.

(20) organization of the speech sound system. Most of the studies adopted the phonemic. approach, with which researchers are required to determine two criteria for. acquisition of phonemes: (1) whether a sound has to be produced correctly in all word. positions (word-initial, word-medial and word-final) or only in word-initial and. word-final position is to be determined. (2) what is the required minimum percentage. 政治大. of children of an age group who can produce a sound correctly as defined in the first. 立. criterion (Dodd et al., 2003)? Early works on phonological development of English. ‧ 國. 學. children adopted the classical approach, which focuses on the age of mastery of. ‧. individual phonemes. In the classical approach, a segment was considered acquired. sit. y. Nat. er. io. when it was accurately produced word-initially, word-medially, and word-finally by a. al. n. v i n certain percentage of the subjects C h (Wellman et al.,U1931; Poole, 1934; Templin, 1957). engchi For example, Poole (1934) investigated sounds acquisition in terms of the three word. positions with an accuracy rate of 100% as the minimum percentage for the. acquisition standard, while others, like in Wellman et al. (1931) and Templin (1957),. the required accuracy rate for the acquisition standard of a particular sound is 70%.. 6.

(21) The classical approach was criticized by Sander (1972) since it only reflects. upper age limits for sound mastery instead of accounting the average performance of. phoneme development. He then proposed the age of customary production, referring. to the age level at which the correct production in at least two of three positions. exceeds 50%, and the mastery of production, which was defined as the age at which. 政治大. the subjects achieve 90% of correct production in all positions. Furthermore, in Zhu’s. 立. (2002) study, the distinction between phoneme emergence and phoneme stabilization. ‧ 國. 學. was discussed, in which the former refers to at least one correct production of a sound,. ‧. irrespective of the target, and the latter refers to correctly producing a sound on two of. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. three opportunities.. Ch. 1.3 Phonologically-disordered children. engchi. i n U. v. Linguistic theories on language acquisition should be able to account for both. normative data as well as the disorder data. The importance of investigating and. further comparing the data of normally-developing children and those who exhibit. phonological disorder help construct a better view of child development and provide a better explanation for the reference in speech pathology. According to Shriberg. 7.

(22) (1982), children with speech disorder do not form a homogeneous group. Previous. research has proposed four subgroups for distinguishing children with speech disorder.. Based on Bradford and Dodd (1994), the four subgroups include Articulation. impairment, Delayed phonological skills, Consistent deviant disorder, and. Inconsistent speech disorder.. 政治大. The difficulty in perception and production of sounds in certain positions and. 立. different phonological processes were not only discussed in normally-developing. ‧ 國. 學. children but also children with phonological disorder. Grunwell (1987) characterized. ‧. disordered phonology based on structure, the complexity of which lead to simplified. sit. y. Nat. er. io. word shapes. Regarding the phonological patterns, several researchers detected a few. al. n. v i n odd processes used by the phonologically-disordered children. They tended to replace Ch engchi U the presumably earlier-developing sounds with the later-occurring sounds (Lorentz,. 1974; Grunwell, 1981; Weiner, 1981; Leonard, 1985). The glides performance of. Mandarin phonologically-disordered children examined previously suggested a. similar phonological process found in that of normally-developing children. The. prenuclear glides and postnuclear glides are subjected to deletion process (Wu, 1999;. 8.

(23) Zhu, 2000).. Although a few studies dedicated to the investigation of the development of. glides both in normally-developing children and phonologically-disordered children,. some aspects still remain unanswered. Therefore, this study hopes to provide a detail. investigation of the acquisition of glides in terms of various positions in. 政治大. normally-developing children and further compare the glide performance of the. 立. normative and phonological disorder data through longitudinal observations.. ‧ 國. 學. 1.4 Research questions. ‧. The purpose of the present study is to report the developmental order of three. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. Mandarin glides [w, j, ɥ] in terms of three word positions, word-initially,. Ch. word-medially, and word-finally, and further. engchi. v i n compare U. the normative data with. phonological disorder data in order to explore the possible different process between. the two groups of children. The development of the three vocalic vowels [i, u, y] is. excluded in this study since the present study is only concerned with the performance of the phonetic surface forms, that is, the three glides [w, j, ɥ]. A longitudinal study. was carried out for the investigation of two normally-developing children, one of. 9.

(24) which aged between 0;9-2;4 and the other aged between 0;10-2;5; two. phonologically-disordered children, one of whom is between 4;3 and 4;9, and the. other between 3;10 and 4;3.. Three research questions addressed are as follows: 1. Regarding the emergence of the three Mandarin glides [w, j, ɥ] in. 政治大. normally-developing children acquiring Taiwan Mandarin, at what ages do they. 立. emerge in terms of various syllable positions? In what order do the three glides. ‧ 國. 學. emerge? In which position does each glide appear first?. ‧. 2. Concerning the acquisition of the three Mandarin glides [w, j, ɥ] in. sit. y. Nat. er. io. normally-developing children acquiring Taiwan Mandarin, at what ages do the. n. al. three glides become. v i n stabilized C h in terms of Uthree syllable engchi. positions? In what. sequence are they acquired? In which position do the glides become stabilized first. and in which position are the glides prone to errors? What are the phonological. processes involving glides used by this group of children?. 3. In the light of phonologically-disordered children acquiring Mandarin, is there any. odd pattern detected in glide production? What phonological processes are. 10.

(25) involved in the production of the children? What are the differences of glides. performances. between. the. normally-developing. children. and. phonologically-disordered children?. 1.5 The framework of this study. The framework of this study is presented as follows. Chapter one provides a. 政治大. general overview of the research background of glides development in terms of. 立. phonetic and phonemic approaches. Three research questions are addressed in this. ‧ 國. 學. chapter. Chapter two reviews on the phonological development of glides in both. ‧. normally-developing children and phonologically-disordered children, and will have a. sit. y. Nat. er. io. literature review on Mandarin Phonology, including consonants, vowel inventories,. al. n. v i n and phonological accounts in representation and phonotactic on Cterms U h e ofn phonological i h gc Mandarin glides. In addition, the phonological acquisition theories regarding. Markedness theory and Positional effects and Positional prominence hierarchy will. also be described. Chapter three contains two main parts. The first part is concerned. with data collection, including the background of the subjects, data collecting. procedures, and the recording equipment involved. The second part is concerned with. 11.

(26) data analysis. The methods to data transcription and the criteria adopted for the. assessment of the development of the glides in terms of various positions are provided. under this section. Chapter four presents the results found in the study. Regarding the. normally-developing children, the emergence and the stabilization of the three glides. in terms of various positions and the accuracy rate of the glides in relation to the. 政治大. various positions are shown. Furthermore, the accuracy rate of each glide of the. 立. phonologically-disordered children and the preference of the phonological are. ‧ 國. 學. presented. Chapter five provides the theoretical account for the development of glides. ‧. and a brief summary of the results in response to the three research questions. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. addressed in this study.. Ch. engchi. 12. i n U. v.

(27) Chapter 2. Literature review. In. this. section,. the. phonological. development. of. glides. in. both. normally-developing children and phonologically-disordered children will first be. reviewed in section 2.1. Mandarin Phonology will be presented in section 2.2,. 政治大. including consonant and vowel inventories in 2.2.1 and phonological accounts in. 立. terms of phonological representation and phonotactic on Mandarin glides in section. ‧ 國. 學. 2.2.2 and 2.2.3. Finally, the phonological acquisition theories regarding Markedness. ‧. and Positional effects and Positional prominence hierarchy will be displayed in 2.3.. sit. y. Nat. er. io. 2.1 Phonological development of glides. al. n. v i n In this section, the acquisition C h of glides in Uboth normally-developing children engchi and phonologically-disordered children are displayed in 2.1.1. Section 2.1.2 presents. normally-development and phonologically-disordered children acquiring glides in. Mandarin.. 13.

(28) 2.1.1 Glides acquisition of normally and phonologically-disordered children. Considering the acquisition of sounds, researchers have studied more on. consonant acquisition rather than vowels as the process of constructing consonant. system involves more complicated motor skills and normally takes up a long period of. time (Smith, 1976). Comparing with the research on the acquisition of stops,. 政治大. fricatives, and affricates, fewer studies discussed on the acquisition process of glides.. 立. Previous researchers who dedicated to examining the phonological development of. ‧ 國. 學. English phonemes carried out cross-sectional studies. The review on the development. ‧. of glides of the five studies examining English young children recruited from. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. different areas is listed in Table 2.1 (cf., Dodd et al., 2003).. i n U. v. Table 2.1 An overview of studies on English glide phonemes (Dodd et al., 2003). Ch. Wellman et al.. engchi. Poole (1934). (1931). Templin. Prather et al.. Smit et al.. (1957). (1975). (1990). Subjects. 204. 65. 480. 147. 997. Age range. 2;0-6;0. 2;6-8;6. 3;0-8;0. 2;0-4;0. 3;0-9;0. Word-position. I, M, F. I, M, F. I, M, F. I, F. I, F. % age group. 75%. 100%. 75%. 75%. N/A. [w]. 3. 3;6. 3. 2;8. 3. [j]. 4. 4;6. 3;6. 2;4. 4 (girl)/ 5 (boy). 14.

(29) Notes: 1. For the row word position, I, M, and F refer to word-initial, -medial, and –final positions. 2. % age group refers to the minimum percentage of children of an age group required in deciding the acquisition of phoneme. 3. In the results section, Smit et al. (1990) list different age of acquisition for some of the phonemes at different word positions.. The five studies adopted the phonemic approach in investigating sound development. in English children. The differences between them include subject number, age range,. 政治大. numbers of word positions and the percentage of an age group considered for the. 立. acquisition standard. For the three oft-cited studies (Wellman, 1931; Poole, 1934;. ‧ 國. 學. Templin, 1957), all word positions were taken into account, while in Prather et al.. ‧. sit. y. Nat. (1975) and Smit et al. (1990), only two positions were considered in the studies. The. er. io. criteria of 75% age group in deciding the acquisition of phoneme were adopted in. al. n. v i n Wellman (1931), Templin C (1957), et al. (1975), whereas Pool (1934) h e nandgPrather chi U adopted a stricter standard for determining the acquisition of a phoneme, 100%. The. differences in the findings might be resulted from the various criteria and the methods. employed in these studies.. Early work on phoneme acquisition adopted the classical approach (Wellman,. 1931; Poole, 1934; Templin, 1957). Wellman (1931) studied 204 children from the 15.

(30) University of Iowa Laboratory Preschools, aged from 2;0-6;0. In total, 133 sounds. were examined in the three positions, word-initially, word-medially, and word-finally.. The data were collected by spontaneous speech or imitation. The minimum. percentage of children of an age group required in deciding the acquisition of the. phoneme was 75%; in other words, 75% of the children of an age group were required. 政治大. to have mastered a sound in three positions for a sound to be considered acquired. The. 立. results showed that [w] was acquired earlier than [j], for the former was acquired at. ‧ 國. 學. the age of 3 and the latter was not acquired until the age of 4. Poole (1934) recruited. ‧. 65 children between 2;6 and 8;6 of age at the laboratory schools of the University of. sit. y. Nat. er. io. Michigan. In total, 23 consonants were tested in the three positions, word-initially,. n. al. -medially, and -finally.. v i n The includes both C speech h e n mode h gc i U. spontaneous speech and. imitations. In her study, the assignment of a sound to an age level required 100% of. the children to utter correctly in all three syllable positions. The results of the age. acquiring glides found in Poole (1934) were 6 months later than those of Wellman. (1931) in both [w] (3;6) and [j] (4;6). Templin (1957) conducted an experiment by. investigating 480 children, consisting of 240 boys and 240 girls, ranging from 3 to 8. 16.

(31) years with similar socioeconomic status. Of the 480 subjects, 58 were excluded since. they did not complete all of the tests. The subjects were tested on 176 sound elements. in the initial, medial, and final positions. Moreover, different words were used for. children 3 to 5 and children 6 to 8. Both the repetition data and spontaneous picture. identification utterances were obtained for the data analysis. The assignment of the. 政治大. developmental age level required 75% of the subjects of a group to have mastered a. 立. sound. The finding of labiovelar [w] is identical with that of Wellman et al. (1931),. ‧ 國. 學. indicating that children acquired [w] at the age of 3, but in Templin’s (1957), the [j]. ‧. sound was acquired at the age of 3;6, earlier than the findings in Wellman et al.. sit. y. Nat. er. io. (1931). Sander (1972) reanalyzed Templin’s (1957) and Wellman et al.’s (1931) data. al. n. v i n for average age estimates and of customary consonant usage he proposed. Cupper h e nlimits gchi U The former refers to the ages at which correct production reach 50% and the latter. refers to the ages at which correct production reach 90% in all positions. He found. that the average age estimates and the upper age limits for [w] sound were before two. years old and at three years old. In other words, the children reached 50% correct. production of [w] sound before two years old and did not attain 90% correct. 17.

(32) production until age three. In addition, the average age estimates and upper limits for. the sound [j] were 2;6 and 4;0. Prather et al. (1975) adopted both the classical and. distinctive feature approaches attempting to inspect 147 subjects between the ages of. 2 to 4 years. The subjects were selected from the study for Sequenced Inventory of. Communication Development in Seattle (Hedrick et al., 1975). The subjects were. 政治大. asked to name pictures spontaneously and repetition was requested when needed.. 立. Moreover, assignment of a sound to an age level demands the accurate usage in only. ‧ 國. 學. two positions by 75%, word-initial and word-final positions. In contrast to the. ‧. previous studies, Prather et al. (1975) reported that [w] and [j] were assigned to 2;8. sit. y. Nat. er. io. and 2;4 respectively, differing from the order found in previous studies, in which the. al. n. v i n acquired [j]. Smit C hprior to the palatal engchi U. labiovelar [w] was. (1990) analyzed the. production data of 997 children age 3 to 9 gathered from Iowa Nebraska. Two word. positions, word-initial and word-final were considered in the study. The assessing. instrument contained 80 photographs and 108 phoneme targets. The imitation. production was avoided unless the target sounds were not elicited. The study further. tested on the urban-rural distinction as well as gender differences. The results. 18.

(33) suggested that the urban and rural distinction did not play a role in the acquisition. process whereas gender seemed to exert a great difference. The girls acquired the [j]. sound by 4 years old, but the boys did not acquire the [j] sound until they reached the. age of 5. In more recent studies, Dodd et al. (2003) collected 684 children, aged. between 3;0 to 6;11 years, from nurseries and schools in eight different areas of the. 政治大. UK. The study reported on two aspects of speech development, inclusive of the age at. 立. which a sound is correctly pronounced (phonetic acquisition) and the accurate. ‧ 國. 學. production of a phoneme in terms of word contexts and the percentage of children of. ‧. an age group reaching the level of accuracy (phonemic production). The subjects were. sit. y. Nat. er. io. asked to name 30 pictures for articulatory assessment and 50 pictures for error type. al. n. v i n assessment. Both word-initial were taken into account. A C hand word-final positions engchi U 90% criterion was adopted for the assessment of phonetic acquisition. Moreover,. three factors influencing the process of speech development were discussed, including. age, gender, and socioeconomic status. They found that [w] and [j] reached the. acquisition criterion at the group of 3;0-3;5. Furthermore, they concluded that age and. 19.

(34) gender affect speech development while socioeconomic status did not play a. prominent role in speech development.. The acquisition process of sounds involves complicated processes and therefore. progress gradually within a long period of time (Olmsted, 1971). For the purpose of. tracking sequential development of particular children and identifying the individual. 政治大. variations performed in different children, researchers preferred longitudinal. 立. observations to cross-sectional experiments. Given much data on consonant. ‧ 國. 學. acquisition, the data of glide could only be drawn from few studies. Smith (1973). ‧. conducted a case study via observing his son, Amahl, acquiring English from the age. sit. y. Nat. er. io. of 26 months until four-year-old. In most cases the data were spontaneous utterances. al. n. v i n produced by Amahl. The production were clearly listed in Appendix C h forms of Amahl engchi U C, from which we found the error productions of [w] and [j]. The sound [w] occurred relatively early with fewer errors like [vaif] for ‘wife’. In contrast, the [j] sound appeared to display various forms, as in yellow [lɛlo]/[dɛlo]/[ɛlo] and yes [d̩ɛt]/[rɛt].. Furthermore, he pointed out that the complexity of syllable structures might bring. 20.

(35) about increasing error rate in reduction error type, suggesting that glides and liquids1. which attach to the first consonant in a syllable are subjected to reduction; in other. words, glides are likely to be omitted in word-medial positions (Smith, 1973).. Stoel-Gammon (1985) analyzed longitudinal samples of meaningful speech of 34. normally-developing children involving 19 boys and 15 girls from Seattle area. The. 政治大. data were collected at 3-month intervals between 9 months to 24 months of age. The. 立. spontaneous speech was limited to the subjects who had reached the onset of. ‧ 國. 學. meaningful speech. The onset of meaningful speech referred to the age at which. ‧. subjects reached 10 different word types during an hour recording session. In addition. sit. y. Nat. er. io. to age of emergence, the order of appearance of phones in terms of different positions. al. n. v i n and a given position was C investigated. The results implicated that the [w] sound hengchi U occurred before age of 2 based on the criterion of 50% of the subjects producing the sound. However, the [j] sound did not appear in half of the subjects’ inventories. before 2-year-old.. Linguistic theories on language acquisition should be able to account for both. normative data as well as disorder data. The importance of investigating and further 1. The glides will be the focus of this paper. 21.

(36) comparing the data of normally-developing children and those who exhibit. phonological disorder help construct a better view for child development and provide. a better explanation for the reference in speech pathology. Regarding glides. development in phonologically-disordered children, very few reported on the. performance of glides. The few studies presented the performance of glides in English. 政治大. phonologically-disordered children have shown that they tended to replace the. 立. presumably earlier-developing sounds with the later-occurring sounds (Lorentz, 1974;. ‧ 國. 學. Grunwell, 1981; Weiner, 1981; Leonard, 1985). Lorentz (1974) analyzed a 4-year-old. ‧. child, who replaced the labiovelar glide [w] with a liquid [l] in the C2 position in a. sit. y. Nat. er. io. sequence of C1C2 clusters such as [tlɛl] for twelve. Weiner (1981) also found this. al. n. v i n unusual process from the C observation of a child at the age of 4;3, replacing the hengchi U consonants in the initial position with the later acquired sounds, interdental voiceless [θ] and voiced [ð]. For example, the [j] sound in the word young and the [w] sound in the word wagon were replaced with interdental fricative [θ]. A similar process was. found. in. the. data. presented. in. Grunwell. (1981),. who. studied. a. phonologically-disordered child, age 6;3. Several unusual behaviors were found in the. 22.

(37) child’s data. The child produced interdental fricative [ð] as an alternative for all adult. forms involving fricatives, liquids, and glides in the initial position as in the word yellow [ðɛʔdʊŋ]. Stoel-Gammon & Dunn (1985) identified seven idiosyncratic. processes that occur in the speech of phonologically-disordered children and the one that is relevant to the study is that glides were replaced with stops2 (i.e., [wɪl] ‘will’  [bɪl]).. 立. 政治大. There are a few cross-linguistics studies in relation to the development of glides. ‧ 國. 學. in phonologically-disordered children. Dodd & So (1995) discovered a few odd. ‧. substitution patterns of glides in 17 monolingual Cantonese-speaking children with. sit. y. Nat. al. v i n were C replaced by glottal fricative hengchi U. n and labiovelar [w]. er. io. phonological disorder aged between 3;6 to 6;4. The results described that the palatal [j]. [h] and nasal stop [m]. respectively. The inconsistent initial consonant reductions were identified in velar. stop [k] and palatal [j] and cluster reductions did not show a consistent pattern. Two cases such as [kw] [f] and [khw] being omitted were presented in the study. In the first case, [f] replaced [kw] in the initial position and in the second case, the CG [khw]. 2. The rest of the processes include Atypical Cluster Reduction, Initial Consonant Deletion, Glottal Replacement, Backing, Fricatives substituted for stops, and Sound preference. 23.

(38) was omitted. Golstein (2005) examined the substitution patterns in 39 typically. developing. Spanish-speaking. children,. ranging. from. 3;2-4;11,. and. 39. Spanish-speaking children with phonological disorders between the age of 3;1 and 4;9,. from Puerto Rico. The accurate percentage and substitutions tokens of each sound. were listed, in which we found that typically developing children performed glides. 政治大. with high accuracy rate. The labiovelar [w] was produced without any errors and only. 立. three error tokens for palatal [j], showing the accuracy rate of 97.89%. The substitutes. ‧ 國. 學. include the segments [t, h, ɾ]. However, the subjects with phonological disorders. ‧. demonstrated a few substitution patterns for labiovelar [w] and palatal [j]. They used. sit. y. Nat. er. io. the segments [b, m, d] as the substitutes for labiovelar [w] once within all the data. On. al. n. v i n the other hand, the substitutes labiovelar [w] (3 tokens), the C h for palatal [j] were engchi U segments [b, t, d] (2 tokens each), and the segments [g, f, tʃ, m, n] (1 token each).. 2.1.2 Glide development in Mandarin children. Unlike the glide development in English was mostly described in the acquisition. process of consonants, the acquisition process of glides in Mandarin was discussed. through the acquisition of vowels as the glides in Mandarin are widely considered to. 24.

(39) be the allophonic variants of the three high vowels [i, u, y], creating vowel. combinations, that is, diphthongs and triphthongs. Li (1977) observed a boy, aged. between 2;0 and 3;0, and a girl, aged between 1;1 and 1;8. The findings showed that. the corner vowels [i] and [u] were acquired without errors. Jeng (1979) examined one. boy aged between 2 months and 1;8 and the other boy aged between 1;3 and 2;7 for. 政治大. testing on the Jakobson’s laws of irreversible solidarity. The findings suggested that. 立. high front vowel [i] was acquired earlier than rounded back vowels [u] and [y]. Su. ‧ 國. 學. (1985) studied two Mandarin-Taiwanese bilingual aged 1;5 to 2;4 and 1;2 to 1;11. The. ‧. results reported that the order of three high vowel development is as follows: [i]  [u]. sit. y. Nat. er. io.  [y], in which high front unrounded [i] was acquired earlier than the high back. al. n. v i n rounded [u], followed by theChigh front rounded [y]. These studies have agreed on the hengchi U development of diphthongs were acquired later than the monophthongs. Moreover,. the acquisition processes of diphthongs and triphthongs involving /i, u, y/ demonstrate. the stage of deletion, addition and were substituted with single vowels before their. stabilization (Chao, 1951; Li, 1977; Jeng, 1979; Su, 1985). Furthermore, children. employ deletion at early stages and the substitution occurred later. In contrast, the. 25.

(40) addition strategy does not appear frequently in young children’s production errors.. Hsu (1987) found that children acquiring Mandarin developed monophthongs first, followed by the diphthongs [aj, ej, ɑw, ow]. The last acquired were rhymes ending in nasals [an, ən, ɑŋ, oŋ], which refers to the combinations of a vowel followed by a. nasal coda. Lin & Lin (1993), who investigated young children acquiring Mandarin in. 政治大. Taiwan, suggested that 15 vowels, including monophthongs [i, u, a, ɔ, ɤ, ɛ, ɝ],. 立. diphthongs [aj, ej, ɑw, ow] and rhymes ending in nasals [an, ən, ɑŋ, oŋ] were acquired. ‧ 國. 學. by 90% criterion before 3-year-old, except for the rounded vowel [y]. They reported. ‧. children do not master the vowel [y] sound until the age of 3;5.. sit. y. Nat. er. io. Zhu (2000) adopted a view that Mandarin vowel system consists of nine surface. al. n. v i n forms, which contain nine monophthongs /i, y, u, ɤ, o, ɑ, ə, ɛ, ɚ/, nine diphthongs /ae, Ch engchi U ei, ɑo, ou, ia, iɛ, uɑ, uo, yɛ/, and four triphthongs /iɑo, iou, uae, uei/. She examined. the phonological development of Mandarin young children by conducting both. cross-sectional study and a longitudinal one. In total, 129 normally-developing. children aged from 1;6 to 4;0 were recruited in Beijing for the cross-sectional study. and four Mandarin-speaking young children aged 1;0 to 2;0 were observed for the. 26.

(41) longitudinal study. Regarding the vowel development in her cross-sectional study on. normally-developing children, she found that they tended to reduce triphthongs and. diphthongs into diphthongs and single vowels respectively. The most frequent deleted. sequence of triphthong was [iɑo], simplified by 37% of the subjects, in which 29%. replaced it with [ia] and only 8% replaced it with [ɑo]. Another frequently reduced. 政治大. sequence was [uei], simplified by 10% of the subjects, in which 7% of them were. 立. reduced to [ei]. On the other hand, diphthongs were found to reduce to simple vowels. ‧ 國. 學. by dropping the onglide and offglide, retaining the most sonorant vowel within a. ‧. sequence. Aside from the cross-sectional study, the results found in longitudinal study. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. showed that [ei] and [iou] emerged first among all diphthongs and triphthongs, but the. Ch. [yɛ] combination was the last sound to appear.. engchi. i n U. v. The findings suggested by the previous research seem to imply that children. encounter difficulty in producing onglide and offglide in triphthongs and diphthongs,. producing the subtracted forms of vowels until 4 years of age. However, the study did. not discuss the onglide and offglide separately since they were regarded as a whole of. 27.

(42) vowel combinations. Therefore, the performances of onglides and offglides were not. clearly discussed and remained for further inspection.. In relation to the performance on glides in Chinese-speaking children with. phonological disorder, Wu (1999) described two young children, aged 2;11 and 5.. From the data presented in their word inventory, the younger children performed. 政治大. several errors containing glide deletion in both word-medial and word-final positions. 立. and substitution in word-initial position. For example, the child deleted final. ‧ 國. 學. labiovelar [w] in [jaw] ‘want’ and palatal [j] in [pej] ‘cup’. The word [tɕʰjow tɕʰjow]. ‧. ‘ball’ was produced as [tɔ tɔ], in which both the prenuclear glide and postnuclear. sit. y. Nat. er. io. glide were reduced. Moreover, the initial glide in [ɥɛ] ‘moon’ was replaced with [j].. al. n. v i n The data collected from the C 5-year-old showed a similar process. Glides were reduced hengchi U in both medial and final positions, as in [kɔ pa] for [ʂow pʰa] ‘handkerchief’, [pi pɔ] for [pʰiŋ kwɔ] ‘apple’, and [ka ja] for [tʰaj jɑŋ] ‘sun’. Zhu (2000) as well reported that. Mandarin-speaking children with phonological disorders demonstrated diphthongs. and triphthongs reductions and addition as well as vowel change. For example, [kwaj]. 28.

(43) becomes [paj], showing the substitution of the initial consonants and the deletion. process of medial glide [w].. 2.2 An introduction to Mandarin. This section presents an introduction to Mandarin phonology. In section 2.2.1,. both consonants and vowels are reviewed, followed by phonological accounts of. 政治大. Mandarin glides in section 2.2.2. Finally, phonotactic of glide sequences are presented. 立. 學. ‧ 國. in section 2.2.3.. 2.2.1 Mandarin consonants and vowels. ‧. The possible consonant inventory in Taiwan Mandarin regarding both the place. sit. y. Nat. er. io. of articulation (horizontal axis) and manner of articulation (vertical axis) based on. al. n. v i n Lin’s (2007) study is presented C hbelow in Table 2.1Uin International Phonetic Alphabet engchi symbols (IPA), a wildly used system for transcription of speech sounds for all. languages. The sounds appear on the left of the subdivided tables are unaspirated. voiceless, which share the same features of their corresponding counterparts on the. right except for the aspiration feature.. 29.

(44) Table 2.2 Mandarin consonants Bilabial. Labio-. Dental. dental Stop. ph. p. t. Fricative. f. ts. Nasal. m. Central. w. Alveolo-. alveolar. palatal. Palatal. th. tsh. Velar. k ʂ. s. Affricate. Post-. ɕ. tʂ. tʂʰ. tɕ. x tɕʰ ŋ. n ʐ. j. w. ɥ. approximant Lateral. l. approximant. 政治大 Mandarin inventory contains three glides, including palatal [j], labiopalatal [ɥ], and 立. ‧ 國. 學. labiovelar [w], which are considered to be the allophonic variants of the three. ‧. corresponding high vowels [i], [y], and [u] respectively. The cells that contain glides. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. were marked with the shaded color. The representation of glides will be discussed. further in section 2.2.2.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In Mandarin, the widely adopted view is the five vowel system. Several. researchers posited that the underlying vowel system contains five phonemes, including /i, y, u, ə, a/ (Chao 1968, Cheng 1973, Lin 1989, Duanmu 2002), as. displayed in Table 2.4. based on Duanmu (2002).. 30. kh.

(45) Table 2.3 Standard Chinese Vowels high. i. mid. ə. low. a. y. u. [i], [u], and [y] are three high vowels in Mandarin, in which [y] is a rounded front. vowel. When they occupy the prenuclear position, their corresponding allophones [j],. [w], and [ɥ] appear as their surface forms. In other words, Mandarin glides [j], [w],. 治政 and [ɥ] are believed to derive from the three high大 vowels. The [i] and [u] can form 立 ‧ 國. 學. diphthongs by adding to non-high vowels. Moreover, the mid vowel [ə] is changeable. ‧. in frontness and rounding features depending on the environment and the low vowel. y. Nat. er. io. al. sit. [a] can change in frontness (Duanmu, 2002).. n. Aside from the underlying five-vowel system, Lin (1989, 2007) presented 13. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. surface phones of Mandarin vowels. Table 2.5 is based on the study of Lin’s analysis. (1989, 2007): Table 2.4 Mandarin surface vowel phones Classification. Basic surface phones. Other surface variants. High vowels. [i], [y], [u], [ɿ], [ʅ]. [j], [ɥ], [w] from three high vowels. Mid vowels. [e], [ə], [o], [ɤ]. [ɛ] (variant of [e]), [ɔ] (variant of [o]). Low vowels. [a], [ɑ]. 31.

(46) The Mandarin vowel system including both phonemes and their surface variants. shown in the table above is in accordance with the vowel system presented by Wan &. Jaeger (2003) from a psycholinguistics perspective on speech errors, in which the. distributional evidence unveil the relationship between the underlying phonemic. inventory of Mandarin vowels and their corresponding surface variants. Table 2.6. 政治大. displays the surface phones of vowels in Taiwan Mandarin based on Wan & Jaeger. 立. (2003):. ‧ 國. 學. Table 2.5 Vowel phones in Taiwan Mandarin (Wan & Jaeger, 2003). Low. ə. e ɛ. al. Ch. Round. y. u. Unround. sit. ɨ. n. Lower-Mid. y. i. io. Mid. Unround. Nat. High. Round. Back. ‧. Unround. Central. er. Front. i n U. engchi a. ɤ. v. o ɔ. ɑ. In addition, the distinction between the two apical vowels [ɿ] and [ʅ] in Lin’s study. was not found in the preliminary acoustic inquiry on the data produced by a 21-year. old male subject. Thus, the transcription of the apical vowel following the alveolar. and the post-alveolar consonants was presented with [ɨ].. 32.

(47) 2.2.2. Phonological accounts on Mandarin glides The notion that the Mandarin glides [j, w, ɥ] is not phonemic existing in the. underlying representation of Mandarin inventory but rather surface variants derived. from the underlying three high vowels /i, u, y/ in Mandarin is widely posited by some researchers (Lin, 1989, 2007; Wu, 1994; Duanmu, 2002; Wan, 2003). In Wan’s (2003). 政治大. demonstrated a detail examination on the status of Mandarin glide from the corpus of. 立. speech errors and discovered that the glides interact with vowels more often than with. ‧ 國. 學. the glides and consonants, indicating that the prenuclear glides in Mandarin are. ‧. derived from vowels. However, researchers have not agreed on the status of Mandarin. sit. y. Nat. er. io. prenuclear glides within the discussion of syllable structure. Several studies have. al. n. v i n discussed on the status of the glides (Lin, 1989, 1990; Bao, 1990; CMandarin U h e n gprenuclear i h c Duanmu, 1990; Wan, 1997, 2003; Wang & Chang, 2001). Lin (1989, 1990) proposed. that the prenuclear glide was neither part of the onset nor part of rime. Rather, it is. part of the rhyme projection. She provided evidence of syllable-internal assimilation. in backness and rounding of schwa in support of her view on the status of the. prenuclear glide. When a schwa is preceded by a high front unrounded /i/ and. 33.

(48) followed by a high back rounded /u/, regressive assimilation seems to prevail over. progressive assimilation, resulting in the backness and rounding of schwa, which. shows that the prenuclear glide is not as closely attached to nucleus as postnuclear. glide, and therefore lead to the rime projection claim. The examples are given below: a. /uəi/  [wej] b. /iəu/  [jow]. 立. 政治大. When /ə/ appear between a prenuclear glide and a postnuclear glide, it always. ‧ 國. 學. assimilates to the one follows it, indicating that the vowel forms a closer constituent. ‧. with the postnuclear glide than the prenuclear glide. This evidence provided by Lin is. sit. y. Nat. er. io. similar to Duanmu (1990), in which six pieces of evidence were given, one of which. al. n. v i n argued on mid vowel assimilation. C h Another pieceUof evidence lies in the fact that the engchi pronunciations of English words are phonetically different from those in Chinese. For example, the pronunciation of [swei] ‘sway’is different from [swei] ‘age’ in Standard. Chinese. In his study, he suggested that the prenuclear glide is realized as one sound CG, where G is the secondary articulation of the initial consonant, in other words, the G behaves more like a feature rather than a segment. In Bao’s (1990) early work on. 34.

(49) the discussion of prenuclear glide, he believed that the prenuclear glide within the. initial consonant clusters belongs to the onset through examining Chinese language. games; however, in his more recent work Bao (1996, 2002), the analysis has changed.. He suggested that the status of prenuclear glide is indeterminate since its behaviors in. language games and speech errors were not in concordance with each other.. 政治大. Wan (1997), instead, argued that the prenuclear glide being affiliated with onset. 立. or rhyme is “indeterminate” with regard to syllable structure. Her studies on slips. ‧ 國. 學. analyses provide psycholinguistics evidence for the status of the prenuclear glide,. ‧. suggesting that the place of articulation of the initial consonant plays a role in the. sit. y. Nat. er. io. onset-rhyme determination process. The prenuclear glide is regarded as a part of the. al. n. v i n onset within a syllable when consonant, such as a labial, C ithoccurs after an anterior engchi U dental, or retroflexes, while the prenuclear glide which follows a posterior element,. such as a palatal and velar, is considered to be a part of the rhyme. Wang & Chang. (2001) conducted two phonological experiments, fanchie and anti-fanchie with a view. to examining the status of prenuclear glide. The results showed that prenuclear glides. were found to group with rime by the subjects, irrespective of the place of articulation. 35.

(50) of the preceding consonants, and hence Wan’s proposal of Anterior/Posterior. dichotomy was not supported in the study.. 2.2.3. Phonotactic of glide sequences. The position at which a glide is allowed to occur within a syllable is constrained. to the syllable structures in Taiwan Mandarin. In total, twelve syllable types were. 政治大. analyzed as legal structures, including V, CV, VG, GV, VN, CVG, CVN, CGV, GVG,. 立. GVN, CGVG, and CGVN. The maximum number of a syllable contains four. ‧ 國. 學. segments, CGVX, which represents consonant, glide, vowel, and nasal or glide. ‧. respectively in the sequence as stated in Wan (1999). A table of Mandarin syllable. sit. y. Nat. er. io. structure concerning word-initial, word-medial, and word-final position of glide is. al. n. v i n reorganized and presented along C hwith examples inUTable 2.6 below: engchi. 36.

(51) Table 2.6 Syllable types concerning glide positions in Mandarin Positions of glide. Syllable type. Phonetic Transcription. Gloss. GV. [wa55]. to dig. GVG. [jɑw214]. bite. GVN. [joŋ51]. to use. CGV. [tɕja55]. home. CGVG. [ɕjɑw214]. small. within a syllable. Initial position. 治政大 CGVN [pjɛn51] 立 [aj214]. GVG. [jɑw214]. CVG. [paj214]. CGVG. [ɕjɑw214]. short to bite. io. y. sit. white small. er. Nat. VG. ‧. Postnuclear position. change. 學. ‧ 國. Prenuclear position. al. n. v i n In Table 2.6, legal syllable C structures are categorized h e n g c h i U into three groups based on the glide occurring positions within a syllable. The first group contains three syllable. types that begin with a glide, including GV, GVG, and GVN. The examples for each syllable type are listed in sequence: [wa55] ‘dig’, [jɑw214] ‘bite’, [joŋ51] ‘use’; the. second group contains three syllables CGV, CGVG, and CGVN, in which glides. occur in the medial position, that is to say, the glide is preceded by an initial. 37.

(52) consonant and followed by a nuclear vowel. The examples are: [tɕja55] ‘home’, [ɕjɑw214] ‘small’, and [pjɛn51] ‘change’; the third group is comprised of four. syllable types, inclusive of VG, GVG, CVG, CGVG, in which the glide occurs in the final position of each syllable. The examples presented are: [aj214] ‘short’, [jɑw214] ‘bite’, [paj214] ‘white’, and [ɕjɑw214] ‘small’. Among the three glides [w, j, ɥ], only. 政治大. the high front rounded [ɥ] is not allowed to occur in the final position. The labiovelar. 立. [w] and palatal [j] are allowed to occur in the three positions. Nevertheless, the. ‧ 國. 學. co-occurrence of the vowels with glides is constrained by Mandarin phonotactics.. ‧. Table 2.7, excerpted from Wan & Jaeger (2003), shows the possible co-occurrence of. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. the twelve vowels [i, ɨ, y, u, e, ɛ, ə, ɔ, ɤ, o, a, ɑ] and the three glides [j, w, ɥ] in. Ch. Mandarin, with the gaps being shaded.. engchi. 38. i n U. v.

(53) Table 2.7 Possible co-occurrence of vowels and glides (Wan & Jaeger, 2003) i. ɨ. y. u. e. ɛ. ə. ɔ. ɤ. o. a. ɑ. Single _(C/G). ow. aj. ɑw. p, ph. pej. pow. paj. pɑw. t, th. tej. tow. taj. tɑw. k, kh. kej. kow. kaj. kɑw. f. fej. fow sow. saj. sɑw. ʂow. ʂaj. ʂɑw. xow. xaj. xɑw. maj. mɑw. naj. nɑw. laj. lɑw. joŋ jow. ja. jɑw. woŋ. waj. s, ts, tsh ʂ, tʂ, tʂh, ʐ. y. now. lej. low. n. al. er. io. l. nej. mej. Nat. n. mow. sit. xej. ‧. m. ‧ 國. x. (C)j_ _(C)ɥ_ (C)w_. 學. ɕ, tɕ, tɕh. 立. tsej 政治大 ʂej. Ch. jɛ jɛn. i n U. v. i e n g cɥɛhɥɛn wej. wən. wɔ. Table 2.7 presents the possible combinations of vowels and glides.3 The palatal [j]. occurs only after [e, a], forming [ej, aj] respectively and the labiovelar [w] follows [o, ɑ], forming [ow, ɑw] combinations. Among the four combinations, only [ej] does not 3 The. original table from Wan & Jaeger (2003) demonstrated a complete possible co-occurrence of Mandarin vowels with all onsets and codas. Table 2.7 only remains the combinations involving vowels and glides. 39.

(54) appear alone. Furthermore, lexical gaps are clearly presented in the table by shaded cells, such as *faj and *fɑw. Alveolo-palatal sounds [ɕ, tɕ, tɕh] do not precede [ej, aj, ow, ɑw] directly. The last three rows display the possible co-occurrence of medial. glides and codas. In Mandarin, consonant-glide co-occurrence patterns in onset. position are strictly limited. A detailed distribution of possible CG sequences can be. 政治大. referred to table 2.8 below based on (Wan, 2003):. 立. al. n. Fricative. Ch. *fj, *fw. *sj, sw. engchi *tshj, tshw. Unaspirated. y. thj, thw. phj, phw. io. plosive. tj, tw. Palatal. Velar *kj, kw. *khj, khw. er. Aspirated. pj, pw. Retroflex. ‧. plosive. Dental. Nat. Unaspirated. Labial. sit. Bilabial. 學. ‧ 國. Table 2.8 Possible CG sequences (* indicates the CG sequence is not possible) (Wan, 2003). i n U. v. *ʂj, ʂw. ɕj, ɕɥ, *ɕw. *xj, xw. *ʐj, ʐw *tʂj, tʂw. tɕj, tɕɥ, *tɕw. *tʂhj, tʂhw. tɕhj, tɕhɥ, *tɕhw. affricate. Aspirated affricate. Nasal. mj, mw. nj, nɥ, nw. 40. *ŋj, *ŋw.

(55) Bilabial and dental plosives are allowed to appear with both [j, w] whereas velar. plosives are not allowed to co-occur with high front [j]. Moreover, dental and. retroflex fricatives and affricates can only be followed by [w] while palatal fricatives. and affricates do not form legal CG sequence with it. The high front rounded [ɥ] only. follows palatals and nasal [n].. 政治大. 2.3 Phonological acquisition theories. 立. In this section, Markedness theory is reviewed in 2.3.1 and Positional effects and. ‧ 國. 學. Positional prominence hierarchy discussed by previous studies are presented in. ‧. section 2.3.2.. sit. y. Nat. n. al. Phonologists have. er. io. 2.3.1 Markedness theory. v i n devoted C h to proposing Uvarious engchi. phonological acquisition. theories to account for the acquisition patterns of young children. The concept of. markedness, an essential theory to linguistic system, originates from the language. theory developed in Prague School, where the abstract notion of privative oppositions. was used for the distinction between phonemes. A privative opposition refers to the. presence and the absence of a certain feature within a pair of sounds. Examples of. 41.

(56) privative oppositions are “voice/voiceless’, ‘nasal/non-nasal’, and ‘round/unround’. The sound characterized by the absence of the feature is regarded as ‘unmarked’, and the one characterized by the presence of the feature is regarded as ‘marked’. (Trubetzkoy, 1939). The concept continued principally by Roman Jakobson, who. adopted the concept as theoretical cornerstones for a set of distinctive features. He. 政治大. believed that certain phones are more essential and fundamental in human languages,. 立. which should be developed earlier than other phones. He proposed that children. ‧ 國. 學. would acquire the unmarked sounds of language before the marked segments. ‧. (Jakobson, 1941/1968). His ‘laws of irreversible solidarity’ suggested that nasals,. sit. y. Nat. er. io. stops and anterior feature would be developed prior to orals, fricatives and the. al. n. v i n posterior feature. The determination markedness was primarily based on C h of degree of U engchi the frequency and distribution of the existing sounds cross-linguistically (Greenberg,. 1966). In other words, the sounds commonly seen across world languages are. considered unmarked while the sounds that do not widely occurred across world. languages are viewed as marked sounds. Researchers assume that segments in a. phoneme inventory can be classified into three categories based on cross-linguistic. 42.

(57) evidence and phonetics: Basic articulations, elaborated articulations, and complex. articulations. The basic consonant inventory contains stops [p b t d k g], a glottal stop [ʔ], nasals [m n ŋ], voiceless fricatives [f s h], voiceless affricate [tʃ], liquids [r l], and. glides [w j]. On the other hand, the basic vowel system contains five vowels including. [a], [i], [e], [o], and [u] (Crother, 1978; Lindblom & Maddieson, 1988).. 政治大. In child language regarding phonological development, it is mostly adopted that. 立. the acquisition process begins with the unmarked forms with respect to features,. ‧ 國. 學. segments in relation to positions, and syllable structure (Stoel-Gammon, 1985;. ‧. Demuth & Fee, 1995; Gnanadesikan, 1996). Stoel-Gammon (1985) examined the. sit. y. Nat. er. io. positional differences in the emergence of consonantal phones in the early meaningful. al. n. v i n speech by observing 34 children He discovered that the early C h from 9 to 24 months. engchi U inventories containing stops, nasals, glides and the anterior phones (i.e labial, alveolar). seemed to appear in advance to the posterior phones, in accordance with the. prediction of Jakobson. Furthermore, for each place and manner of articulation, the. phones in initial position emerged before those in final positions. The role of. 43.