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* Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] ; [email protected]
During the process of acquiring language, children need to develop an understanding of how words are phonologically represented, and then store and retrieve these words from their mental lexicon during both perception and production. This is complicated by the presence of phonological processes that occur when words or morphemes come together, which can lead to phonological alternations. In English, for instance, certain consonants can change place of articulation as a function of the following context, for example, ten can be realized as [tem] in the phase of ten pounds, as a result of assimilation. In this case, children need to understand that [tem] is a variant of the word ten, and correctly use this variant in appropriate contexts (i.e., before another word with an initial bilabial stop).
While there is a large body of literature investigating how children learn various types of phonological processes, these investigations have tended to focus on processes involving vowels and consonants, mostly in Germanic and Romance languages (e.g., Albright & Hayes, 2011; Kazazis, 1969; Kerkhoff, 2007; Skoruppa, Mani, & Peperkamp, 2013; van de Vijver & Baer-Henney, 2013; Zamuner, Kerkhoff, & Fikkert, 2006). However, 60%–70% of human languages also involve tonal contrasts (Yip, 2002). This raises questions about how children learning tonal languages acquire phonological alternations that involve tone changes, or tonal processes.
One of the most well-studied tonal processes is the tone sandhi phenomenon, leading to tonal changes in specific tonal and prosodic contexts. Mandarin Chinese has four lexical tones as well as various tone sandhi processes. Among those most well studied is the tone 3 sandhi process, typically modifying the realization of the third tone (T3) when followed by another T3 within the same prosodic domain (Yip, 2002, p. 180). Thus, tone sandhi is a complex phonological process conditioned by both the tonal context and the prosodic structure in which it appears (Shih, 1997). The aim of the present study was thus to explore when and how children develop productive knowledge of the tone sandhi process, with correct implementation across tonal contexts and prosodic structures. The findings could have implications not only for the learning of tonal alternations but also for learning phonological alternations more generally.
Lexical tones
Mandarin...