An Experimental Study On The Acquisition Of Affricatein Mandarin By Diglossia Children In Rongxian, Sichuan Province

Bilingualism and diglossia are common in China,and the research on the development of children’s phonological acquisition plays an important role in understanding children’s language development.The present study investigated the affricate production of standard Chinese by 42 diglossia children aged 3 to 8 in Rongxian,Sichuan Province,using an experimental phonetics approach.Based on acoustic analysis and subjective listening,this paper explores the development of Mandarin affricate acquisition of diglossia children in Rongxian and compares it with that of Rongxian’s adults.The findings of this study are as follows:(1)The affricates of diglossia children in different age groups are different,and gradually approach to adults with the increase of age and language experience.(2)The affricate output of diglossia children’s Mandarin is still different from that of Rongxian’s Adults’ Mandarin: in terms of duration,diglossia children aged 7 to 8 years have the same way of output as Rongxian’s adults,and the Chinese affricates of diglossia children show a dynamic upward trend;However,in terms of formant,diglossia children aged 3 to 4 have a more similar way of production than adults in Rongxian,and the affricates of diglossia Children’s Mandarin show a U-shaped development trend;(3)The acquisition sequence and error types of affricates in diglossia children in Rongxian were the same as those in Mandarin monolinguals children.First,the affricates were acquired at the front of the tongue,then the affricate of the tip of the tongue;and the affricates were acquired at the non-aspirated end,after learning the affricate of aspirated voice;There were some errors such as preposition,postposition and affricalization.In terms of acquisition time,diglossia children in Rongxian have acquired j[(?)] and q[(?)] by the age of 3 years,z[(?)],zh[(?)],ch[(?)] and c[(?)] have not been acquired stably at the age of 5 years.The results are consistent with those of Mandarin monolingual children.However,the stable acquisition of z[(?)],zh[(?)],ch[(?)] and c[(?)] by diglossia children in Rongxian took place between the ages of 7and 8,which was later than that of Mandarin monolingual children.The results of this study are of great significance to the teaching of affricate in Mandarin for Sichuan diglossia children and to the overall understanding of the development of children’s phonetic acquisition.