Production of Mandarin and Fuzhou lexical tones in six- to seven-year-old Mandarin-Fuzhou bilingual children.

You, Shuxiang; Du, Yanrong; Chen, Qingyi

This study investigated the production of Mandarin and Fuzhou lexical tones by Mandarin-Fuzhou bilingual children. Forty children aged 6;11 to 7;6 and two groups of adults (Mandarin speakers and Fuzhou speakers) were asked to produce pre-selected familiar monosyllabic words. Adult judges' perceptual judgments and acoustic analysis showed that: (1) overall, these children's production performance of Mandarin tones was similar to adults', with very high accuracy; (2) children did not reach adult-like production competence in Fuzhou tones by age 7;6; and (3) there was an imbalance in children's development of the seven lexical tones in Fuzhou. Children's late and unbalanced development of Fuzhou tones could be ascribed to their unbalanced Mandarin-Fuzhou exposure, and it is argued that children might transfer the characteristics of the Mandarin tonal system to their production of Fuzhou tones.

FUZHOU Fu (Fujian Sheng, China); CHILD development; JUDGES; LEGAL judgments; ADULTS; AGE

Acta Linguistica Academica, 2024, Vol 71, Issue 3, p309

2559-8201

Academic Journal

10.1556/2062.2023.00733