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Cantonese consonantal development: towards a nonlinear account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2001

WINNIE W-Y. WONG  and
STEPHANIE F. STOKES
WINNIE W-Y. WONG
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
STEPHANIE F. STOKES
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
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Abstract

Descriptions of the development of prosodic and segmental tiers of children's phonological systems have been derived from investigations of the development of English. This paper provides a preliminary description of phonological tier development in Cantonese-speaking children. Eight children, (two each at 1;7, 2;6, 3;5, and 4;2 years) named 95 pictures. The data were analysed for word, syllable, onset-rime, skeletal, and segmental tiers. The results suggested a developmental order in the acquisition of hierarchical features. Decreasing order of accuracy of the tiers was word = syllable > onset-rime = skeletal > segmental. A model of feature geometry was adopted to describe the acquisition of features. An interesting finding is the way the laryngeal feature (aspiration) was combined with place contrasts one at a time rather than all at once.

Type
NOTE
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , February 2001 , pp. 195 - 212
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We wish to thank the children and their parents for their participation in the study, Kwok Chi Leung Child Care Centre for assistance with subject recruitment, and Ms Peggy Wong for conducting the reliability analysis. We are grateful to three anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor for their detailed reviews and to Paul Fletcher for comments on drafts.