The Development of Voiceless Sibilant Fricatives in Putonghua-Speaking Children

Abstract

The observed sound-acquisition order was interpreted as reflecting a combined influence of both oromotor maturation and language-specific phoneme frequency in Putonghua. Acoustic results suggest a maturational advantage of the tongue body over the tongue tip during fricative development.

The Phonological Development of Mandarin Voiceless Affricates in Three- to Five-Year-Old Children

“…However, exposure to a particular language could also affect the process of phonological development. As a result, children produce speech sounds at a different speed and varying rate ( Vihman, 1993 ; Li and Munson, 2016 ), reflecting a combination of factors such as articulatory complexity, the ambient language, and oromotor maturation ( Jakobson, 1968 ; Locke, 1983 ; Pye et al, 1987 ; Ingram, 1988a ; de Boysson-Bardies et al, 1989 ; Stokes and Surendran, 2005 ). However, the relative contribution of these factors differs across languages.…”

“…In addition, the development of motor control progresses from large-muscle (i.e., arms and legs) to small muscle (i.e., hands and toes) use, and from central (i.e., palm) to peripheral (i.e., fingers) body parts ( McBryde and Ziviani, 1990 ; Butterworth et al, 1997 ; Wallace and Whishaw, 2003 ), termed proximal-distal principle . Based on this principle, Li and Munson (2016) proposed the oromotor maturation hypothesis that sounds involving the tongue body would be acquired earlier than those involving the tongue tip. They further applied this principle to tongue maturation and speculated that children have earlier control over the tongue body than other parts of the tongue (i.e., tongue tip), which accounts for the earlier acquisition of alveopalatal fricatives in diverse languages ( Ingram, 1988b ; Gibbon, 1999 ; Li et al, 2011 ; Li and Munson, 2016 ), though this sound is infrequently found in world’s languages, in stark contrast to the ideas proposed by Jakobson (1968) .…”

“…Based on this principle, Li and Munson (2016) proposed the oromotor maturation hypothesis that sounds involving the tongue body would be acquired earlier than those involving the tongue tip. They further applied this principle to tongue maturation and speculated that children have earlier control over the tongue body than other parts of the tongue (i.e., tongue tip), which accounts for the earlier acquisition of alveopalatal fricatives in diverse languages ( Ingram, 1988b ; Gibbon, 1999 ; Li et al, 2011 ; Li and Munson, 2016 ), though this sound is infrequently found in world’s languages, in stark contrast to the ideas proposed by Jakobson (1968) . Mandarin affricates are characterized with a two-way aspiration contrast across three places of articulation, distinguishing itself from many other languages ( Lin and Wang, 1992 ).…”

“…Therefore, a reliable description of child speech patterns plays a key role in settling the controversies regarding phonological development. Most prior studies on phonological development were based on the transcription method; however, increasing studies have repeatedly pointed out the shortcomings of transcription analysis (e.g., Edwards and Beckman, 2008 ; Li, 2008 ; Munson et al, 2010 , 2012 ; Yang, 2014 ; Li and Munson, 2016 ; Tang et al, 2019a ). For example, listeners perceive speech sounds categorically, ignoring the acoustic differences within the category ( Liberman et al, 1957 ).…”

A First Step toward the Clinical Application of Landmark-Based Acoustic Analysis in Child Mandarin

“…The results indicate that the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative/ɕ/and the voiceless alveolar fricative/s/are acquired sometime before those children are three years old and four and half years old, respectively. However, by studying the same segments with acoustical analyses, Li and Munson [ 33 ] show that the spectral energy distribution and the values of the second formant onset frequency of the following vowels generated by five-year-olds (the oldest age group in the study) are still different from those produced by adults. This shows that the adoption of acoustical methods in child language research is essential and could enable researchers to analyze and compare children’s speech without associating their quasiphonetic productions with a transcriber’s mental phonetic inventory.…”