蒋宇涵在语音学顶级国际学术会议Speech Prosody发表论文并做海报展示
Pitch Declination Development in Spontaneous Speech of 3-5-year-old Mandarin-Speaking Children
Abstract:
The role of physiological constraints versus linguistic preplanning in pitch declination remains a central debate in prosody research. This question is particularly compelling for tonal languages like Mandarin, where pitch also serves a lexically distinctive function, yet developmental evidence remains scarce. This study investigates declination trends (reflected in overall regression line, top-line and bottom-line slopes) in spontaneous speech of 45 Mandarin-speaking children (15 each aged 3, 4, and 5). Participants engaged in natural conversations about daily activities while their productions were recorded. Results revealed significant developmental differences in bottom-line slopes between 3- and 4-year-olds, but not between 4- and 5-year-olds. The steepest top-line slope occurred at age 4, though overall trends across groups showed no significant differences. These findings suggest that the developmental stabilization of bottom-line declination, potentially related to rhythmic organization, occurs between ages 3 and 4, while top-line patterns, associated with semantic structuring, remain variable throughout this period. The results indicate that bottom-line slope may serve as a more reliable indicator than top-line or overall declination for tracking early prosodic development in Mandarin-speaking children.
原载Jiang, Y., Chen, L., Yu, A., Fu, Q., Wang*, T. (2026) Pitch Declination Development in Spontaneous Speech of 3-5-year-old Mandarin-Speaking Children. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2026, 673-677.