Tone Acquisition at the One-Word Stage in Taiwan Mandarin : A corpus study

Abstract

Evidence for early developmental patterns of tone acquisition was found by investigating a longitudinal study of 8 children (0;6-1;8) in Taiwan Mandarin. The present study found that in terms of the order of the emergence of tones, there seems to be a universal tendency whereby high-level tones are likely to be acquired earlier than high-falling tones, followed by low-falling tones and rising tones. As for the distribution patterns of tones in monosyllabic words, highfalling tones are the most common, high-level tones are the next common, and low-falling tones are the least common. In disyllabic words, a language-specific phenomenon in Taiwan made the endearment tone, T3+T2, the most common pattern, with the high-level sequence, T1+T1, taking second place, followed by the morphologically-conditioned pattern, T2+T3. Binary foot structure has been supported; however, no rhythmic effect has been found between tones and disyllables. Although children acquired four tones early, they were not able to stabilize the system at the one-word stage. Articulatory theory, physiological effort, phonetic cues, Markedness constraints, and influence from the caretakers’ speech and linguistic environment provide some explanations for the order of emergence of tone acquisition and the distribution patterns of tones.