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Going beyond F0: The acquisition of Mandarin tones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2020

Nari RHEE ,
Aoju CHEN Open the ORCID record for Aoju CHEN [Opens in a new window]  and
Jianjing KUANG
Nari RHEE*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, USA
Aoju CHEN
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, Netherlands
Jianjing KUANG*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, USA
*
*Corresponding authors: Department of Linguistics, 3401-C Walnut Street, Suite 300, C-Wing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104-6228, USA E-mails: nrhee@sas.upenn.edu and kuangj@ling.upenn.edu
*Corresponding authors: Department of Linguistics, 3401-C Walnut Street, Suite 300, C-Wing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA19104-6228, USA E-mails: nrhee@sas.upenn.edu and kuangj@ling.upenn.edu
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Abstract

Using a semi-spontaneous speech corpus, we present evidence from computational modelling of tonal productions from Mandarin-speaking children (4- to 11-years old) and adults, showing that children exceed the adult-level tonal distinction at the age of 7 to 8 years using F0 cues, but do not reach the high adult-level distinction using spectral cues even at the age of 10 to 11 years. The difference in the developmental curves of F0 and spectral cues suggests that, in Mandarin tone production, secondary cues continue to develop even after the mastery of primary cues.

Keywords

tone acquisitionspectral cuesMandarin
Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , March 2021 , pp. 387 - 398
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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