白语儿童焦点韵律的习得和发展

The Development of Prosodic Focus-Marking in Bai-Speaking Children

研究探索白语儿童焦点韵律习得的发展路径。实验在半自然的语境下,引导5岁至7岁的白语儿童产出处于不同焦点条件下的“主语—动词—宾语”(SVO)句子。本研究考察了白语儿童在其母语的不同声调中将韵律参数(包括时长和音高)用于焦点编码方式。结果发现,白语儿童在5岁时,试图在个别声调中通过变化平均音高来区分窄焦点和焦点后。6岁,白语儿童开始探索通过使用韵律参数来编码焦点,这样的探索既涉及对时长的变化也涉及对音高的变化。7岁是一个重要的发展阶段,白语儿童已经完全展现出和白语成人完全一致的通过变化时长来编码焦点的能力。因而,研究结果显示,白语儿童对其母语白语焦点韵律编码的习得与发展受到母语背景和语言普遍性的双重影响,呈现阶段性并最终向白语成人靠拢。

This study examines the developmental trajectory of prosodic focus-marking in Bai-speaking children.Sentences in the“subject-verb-object”(SVO)structure were elicited from the age group of five to seven in varied focus conditions in a semi-spontaneous setting.The use of prosodic cues,including duration and pitch for encoding focus,was examined in different lexical tones.We have found that Bai children at the age of five distinguished tones in the narrow focus and post-focus positions by varying the mean pitch.They started to explore the use of prosody for encoding focus at the age of six.Additionally,the seven-year-old is a critical age for Bai children's prosodic development in terms of using prosody for encoding focus in a fully adult-like fashion.These results thus showed that the acquisition of prosodic focus-marking in Bai children proceeds in stages before ultimately reaching the adult-like proficiency.