The role of phonemes and syllables in child phonology: Evidence from psycholinguistic experiments in Mandarin

Abstract

國 立 政 治 大 學 研 究 所 碩 士 論 文 摘 要\n\n研究所所別： 語言學研究所\n\n論文名稱：音位和音節在中文兒童語音扮演的角色：心理語言學實驗的驗證\n\n指導教授：萬依萍\n\n研究生：廖昭媛\n\n論文內容摘要：（共一冊，13,641字，分五章二十節，並扼要說明內容，共453字）\n\n本文目的是想瞭解兒童在聽辨語音相似性，對於音位和音節的敏感性。本研究的受試者是41位操持國語的學齡前兒童。其中二十一位兒童參與非詞語音分類實驗（the nonword classification task）。兒童首先要學習兩個雙音節的標準語音，然後他（她）要依據聽覺上的相似性來歸類稍候聽到的測試音。他們需要要判定測試音聽起和哪一個標準音聽起來比較相似。結果顯示兒童在音位相似性或是音節相似方面的表現並無顯著的差異。另外二十位兒童皆下來進行非詞語音聽辯的實驗（The word-pair judgment task 1 and 2）。在測試工作（一），兒童要聽辨一對兩個雙音節的非詞語音，在前面的部份聽起來是否相似。結果顯示，兒童在音位和音節相似性，音位和最多相性似上的表現皆有顯著的差異性。在測試工作（二），兒童也是要聽辨一對兩個雙音節的非詞語音，在後面的部份聽起來是否相似。實驗的結果和測試工作（一）相同。整體上而言，要解釋在兒童聽辯語音上的表現，除了從「數量」方面的考量，更可以從語音本身結構上上的差異性來討論兒童對與音位和音節的敏感性。此外，在本文的實驗裡，並未發現相似因的位置會造成兒童在聽辯語音上的差異。

Abstract\nThis paper investigated the role of syllables and phonemes in Mandarin speaking children in terms of the sensitivity to the syllable correspondences and phoneme correspondences. In the first experiment, the nonword classification task, 21 kindergarteners were recruited. The child had to learn two disyllabic standard sounds. Then, he/she was presented with a test nonword and had to classifiy the test nonword to one of the two standard sounds if the test sound and the standard sound are sounded alike at the beginnings. The results in the nonword classification task have shown that the young children did not show the significant reliance on the type of the syllable correspondences. In the two further experiments, the word-pair judgment task 1 and 2, another 20 kindergarteners were recruited. The children were asked to judge whether two test words are sounded alike at the beginnings. The results in the word-pair judgment task 1 indicate that syllables are treated as a structural unit and phonemes are belonging to the lower level of the syllabic constructs. The children’s responses tend to reflect the effect of the syllable structure in the language process rather than the effect of the size of shared units. In the word-pair judgment task 2, the child has to judge whether the two test words are sounded alike at the ends. The results also indicate that children’s performance should be viewed in terms of syllable structures. Besides, the location of the shared unit did not play a role when children judge the similarity between the speech sounds. Children performed equally the same when the shared units are either at the beginnings or at the ends of words in the present study.