ERIC Number: EJ742790
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2005-Oct
Pages: 15
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
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Available Date: N/A
Perception and Production of Lexical Tones by 3-Year-Old, Mandarin-Speaking Children
Wong, Puisan; Schwartz, Richard G.; Jenkins, James J.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v48 n5 p1065-1079 Oct 2005
The present study investigated 3-year-old children's perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones in monosyllabic words. Thirteen 3-year-old, Mandarin-speaking children participated in the study. Tone perception was examined by a picture-pointing task, and tone production was investigated by picture naming. To compare children's productions with the adult forms, 4 mothers of the children were asked to say the same set of words to their children in a picture-reading activity. The children's and mothers' productions were low-pass filtered at 500 Hz and 400 Hz, respectively, to eliminate segmental information. Ten Mandarin-speaking judges identified the productions of tones from the filtered speech. Adult productions were more accurately identified than productions of the children. The children perceived the level, rising, and falling tones with relatively high accuracy. The dipping tone posed the greatest difficulty for the children in both perception and production. (Contains 1 figure and 8 tables.)
Descriptors: Auditory Perception, Mandarin Chinese, Young Children, Tone Languages, Visual Stimuli, Comparative Analysis, Mothers, Phonetics, Correlation, Intonation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Author Affiliations: N/A