Taiwanese-Guoyu Bilingual Children and Adults' Sibilant Fricative Production Patterns

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Ya-ting Shih, B.A., M.A.

College of Education and Human Ecology

The Ohio State University

2012

Dissertation Committee:

Dr. Leslie Moore, Advisor

Dr. Mary Beckman

Dr. Marjorie Chan

Dr. Li-mei Chen

Copyrighted by

Ya-ting Shih

2012

Abstract

How bilinguals' two languages interact with each other has stimulated considerable research. However, little of this research has focused on objective measures of speech production. This study aims to investigate bilinguals' production of Guoyu and

Taiwanese voiceless sibilant fricatives to see how language contact and language dominance influence their production patterns. Guoyu is the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan and Taiwanese is one of the Southern Min dialects. Guoyu has a three-way contrast among three voiceless sibilants, namely, a dental /s/, an apical post alveolar or retroflex

/ʂ/, and an alveopalatal /ɕ/. However, Taiwanese only has one voiceless sibilant, a coronal

/s/, which has a “palatalized” quality in the context of a following /i/ or /j/. The mismatch between the two sibilant systems provides an opportunity to compare how bilinguals with different language acquisition orders and language dominance align the two different systems.

The two specific questions that this study aims to address are (1) how bilingual adults of three generations' sibilants productions change over time due to language contact and (2) how bilingual children from 2 to 6 years old in the same context acquire

Taiwanese and Guoyu sibilants. Participants were 64 bilingual adults, ranging in age from 20 to 80 years with approximately 20 in each of three adult generations (elderly, middle-aged and young), and 60 bilingual children, ranging in age from 2 to 6. Their

ii productions of target sibilants were elicited in an audio- and picture-prompted repetition task. There were two separate recording sections for Guoyu and Taiwanese. In each section, all the target sibilants were in word-initial position with comparable vowel contexts. Adults' productions were analyzed by measuring (1) the centroid frequency in a spectrum estimated over a window taken at the central 20 ms of each sibilants and (2) the second formant frequency at the consonant-vowel boundary. The children's productions were first analyzed by transcription and then using the same two acoustic measures as for the adults.

When the two acoustic measures are plotted against each other, the plots for the elderly and middle-aged adults show two main clusters for all sibilants. One cluster is for

Guoyu /ɕ/ and the palatalized allophone of Taiwanese /s/, and the other cluster is a merged category of Taiwanese /s/, Guoyu /s/ and Guoyu /ʂ/. For the elderly and middle- aged males, these two clusters are differentiated primarily in the second formant frequency dimension, and both clusters show centroid values that are intermediate between the high values expected for a dental /s/ and the low values expected for postalveolar fricatives. However, middle-aged females show signs of fronting their /s/

(i.e., producing a higher centroid value) in order to accommodate to the more complex

Guoyu sibilant inventory. Moreover, unlike the older two generations, young adults have a more distinctive Guoyu three-way contrast of sibilants, a higher centroid values for a dental /s/, lower centroid value for a retroflex /ʂ/ and intermediate centroids for an alveopalatal /ɕ/.

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Analysis of the transcriptions of the children’s productions showed that these bilingual children acquire /s/ and /ɕ/ at the same age, which is much earlier than their acquisition of /ʂ/. The errors for /s/ and /ɕ/ are mostly substitutions of stops and affricates at the same place of articulation as the target sibilants. Furthermore, /s/ is often used for

Guoyu /ʂ/. In addition, their acoustic data indicates that children make a contrast more like young adults but even at 6 years old, they still do not make clear contrast like adults.

Based on the data from the four generations of bilinguals, it seems that in this language contact context, there may be an ongoing language shift from Taiwanese to Guoyu.

Dedication

To my wonderful parents, who have always encouraged me to follow my heart and pursue my dreams. Thank you for your love, support and encouragement.

To my brother, who always cheers me up during the dissertation writing process.

Thank you for your love and encouragement.

Acknowledgments

This dissertation would not have been completed without the support of many people. First of all, I would like to express my greatest appreciation to Dr. Leslie Moore, my advisor and mentor. Her guidance, advice and support has made this a rewarding journey. I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Mary Beckman for her guidance through the planning and development of this study and her insightful feedback. I would like to express my gratefulness to Dr. Marjorie Chan for her valuable feedback. I also want to express my gratitude to Dr. Li-mei Chen from the department of Foreign

Languages and Literature at Cheng Kung University in Taiwan for her assistance in my data collection in Taiwan.

This dissertation would not have been completed without the support from the following funding sources: The Center for Cognitive Science at the Ohio State University and the Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship from the Graduate School at the Ohio State University.

I would like to extend my thanks to Seth Wiener for his help in my dissertation writing and the fricative group, Jennifer Zhang, Jeff Kallay and Jeff Holliday, for their constructive feedback in data analysis. I would like to thank my dissertation support group, Ming Fang and Jing Yang for their support and encouragement.

My special thanks are extended to Kairen Cheng for his support and patience during the past 5 years and E-ling Hsiao for her encouragement. I also like to thank my vi family and friends in Taiwan. Last, I also want to thank all the children and adults who participated in my study. .

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Vita

2004...... B.A. Foreign Languages & Applied Linguistics, ...... Yuan Ze University, Taiwan 2007...... M.A. Linguistics, ...... Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

Publications Shih, Y., Kallay, J., & Zhang, J. (2012). Sibilant production patterns in three generations of Guoyu-Taiwanese bilinguals [Abstract]. Journal of Acoustical Society of America. 132, 1938.

Shih, Y., & Kong, E. (2011). Perception of Mandarin fricatives by native speakers of Taiwan Mandarin and Taiwanese. Proceedings of the North America Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-23), USA, 1, 110-119.

Wiener, S., & Shih, Y. (2011). Divergent places of articulation: [w] and [ʋ] in modern spoken Mandarin. Proceedings of the North America Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-23), USA, 1, 173-190.

Fields of Study

Major Field: Education

viii

Table of Contents Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... v

Acknowledgments ...... vi

Vita ...... viii

Table of Contents ...... ix

List of Tables ...... xii

List of Figures ...... xiv

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

1.1 Background ...... 1

1.2 Language Contact and Bilingualism ...... 5

1.3 Sibilants ...... 11

1.4 Research Questions ...... 13

1.5 Contribution ...... 14

1.6 Definition of Terms ...... 15

1.6.1 Bilinguals ...... 15

1.6.2 Second language acquisition ...... 16

1.6.3 Language contact ...... 16

Chapter 2: Literature Review ...... 17

2.1 Guoyu and Taiwanese Sibilants ...... 17

2.2 Children's Acquisition of Fricatives ...... 25

2.3 Acoustic Measures of Fricatives ...... 32

2.4 Speech Productions in Second Language Acquisition ...... 35

2.5 Factors that Influence Sound Change ...... 38

Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 42

3.1 Research Questions ...... 42

3.2 Research Design ...... 43

3.2.1 Location ...... 43

3.2.2 Subjects ...... 43

3.2.3 Materials ...... 46

3.2.4 Data collection procedures ...... 50

3.3 Data Analysis Methods ...... 54

3.3.1 Transcription ...... 54

3.3.2 Acoustics analysis ...... 55

3.3.3 Analysis of language use questionnaire ...... 59

Chapter 4: Acoustic Analysis of Adults Production of Sibilants ...... 61

4.1 Research Questions for Adults' Productions ...... 61

4.2 Bilingual Adults' Results of Language Use Questionnaire ...... 62

4.3 Acoustic and Statistic Results of Bilingual Adults' production ...... 64

Chapter 5: Results of Children's Data ...... 79

5.1 Research Questions for Children's Data ...... 79

5.2 Bilingual Children's Results of Language Use Questionnaire...... 79

5.3 Children's Transcription Data ...... 80

5.3.1 Acquisition patterns ...... 81

5.3.2 Substitution errors ...... 87

5.4 Acoustic Results of Children' production ...... 98

5.5 Children's production patterns over “time” ...... 106

Chapter 6: Conclusion ...... 108

Appendix ...... 114

References ...... 117

List of Tables

Table 1: Participants of four generations and their language background ...... 11

Table 2: Sibilant inventories of Guoyu and Taiwanese based on Chung (1996) and Lin

(2007).*/ʂ/ is unstable. Some people make the contrast while others do not...... 12

Table 3: Standard Putonghua consonants ...... 18

Table 4: Standard Putonghua vowels ...... 18

Table 5: Standard Guoyu consonants ...... 19

Table 6: Standard Taiwanese consonants ...... 20

Table 7: Standard Taiwanese vowels ...... 21

Table 8: Number of children in each age group ...... 44

Table 9:Number of subjects in each adult group ...... 46

Table 10: Guoyu word list ...... 48

Table 11: Taiwanese word list ...... 49

Table 12: Transcription symbols used for incorrect tokens ...... 55

Table 13: Number of adult participants in each age group ...... 62

Table 14: Language dominance of the adult groups ...... 64

Table 15: Summary of females' model of [s]. * means statistically significant based on the t distribution table ...... 71

Table 16: Summary of males' model of [s] ...... 72 xii

Table 17: Summary of females' model of [ɕ] ...... 73

Table 18: Summary of males' model of [ɕ] ...... 73

Table 19: Summary of females' model of /s/ an /ʂ/.* means statistically significant based on the t distribution table ...... 75

Table 20: Summary of males' model of /s/ and /ʂ/.* means statistically significant based on the t distribution table ...... 75

Table 21: Language dominance of the child groups ...... 79

Table 22: The mean age of each child group ...... 81

Table 23: Number and percentage of children have at least 75 percent or more accuracy in each age group. T means Taiwanese and G means Guoyu ...... 82

Table 24: Substitutions for Taiwanese /s/=[s] ...... 88

Table 25: Substitutions for Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ] ...... 89

Table 26: Substitutions for Guoyu /s/ ...... 89

Table 27: Substitutions for Guoyu /ɕ/ ...... 90

Table 28: Substitutions for Guoyu /ʂ/ ...... 91

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Recording procedures ...... 51

Figure 2: The screenshot of the word repetition task. The target word is Guoyu

"watermelon"...... 53

Figure 3: Screenshot of transcription and alignment ...... 56

Figure 4: Screenshot of event tagging. The word is Guoyu "forest"...... 57

Figure 5: The measurement of onset of F2 (on the top panel) and centroid/M1 (on the bottom panel). Courtesy of Dr. Mary Beckman ...... 59

Figure 6: Females from three age groups' production of sibilants. In the legend box,

T=Taiwanese, G=Guoyu ...... 67

Figure 7: Males from three age groups' production of sibilants. In the legend box,

T=Taiwanese, G=Guoyu ...... 68

Figure 8: Children's acquisition order of Guoyu and Taiwanese sibilants ...... 85

Figure 9: Proportion correct of all sibilants separated by age groups ...... 86

Figure 10: Percentage of errors for Taiwanese /s/=[s] ...... 92

Figure 11: An example of overshoot error. The target word is Guoyu word "squirrel". .. 94

Figure 12: Percentage of errors for Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ]...... 94

Figure 13: Percentage of errors for Guoyu /s/ ...... 95

Figure 14: Percentage of errors for Guoyu /ɕ/ ...... 96 xiv

Figure 15: Percentage of errors for Guoyu /ʂ/ ...... 97

Figure 16: Bilingual 3and 4 years old girls' sibilant productions ...... 100

Figure 17: Bilingual 5 and 6 years old girls' sibilant productions ...... 101

Figure 18: Bilingual 3 and 4 years old boys' sibilant productions ...... 102

Figure 19: Bilingual 5 and 6 years old boys' sibilant productions ...... 103

Figure 20: Mean centroid and onsetF2 of all Guoyu tokens for each child plotted against their age ...... 107

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Background

The goal of this phonetic study is to investigate in a language contact context, how the interaction between a bilingual’s first language (L1) and second language (L2) manifests itself in the production of sibilants. Additionally, this study also investigates how young bilingual children in this context acquire sibilants; a class of sounds, which are acquired relatively later than stops and nasals in children's phonological acquisition process.

Taiwan is located in East Asia and is composed of a main island and several other smaller islands. Neighboring countries include China to the west and Korea and Japan to the northeast. Historically, the geographical location of Taiwan has resulted in multilingualism. According to Chen (2010), the total population of Taiwan is about 23 million and is composed of four main ethnolinguistic groups. They are "Southern

Min/Minnan/Minnanese (73.3%), Mainlanders (13%), Hakka (12%) and Austro-

Polynesian aborigines (1.7%) ". These four groups came to Taiwan at different periods of time and brought their languages with them to this multilingual country. The Austro-

Polynesian aborigines are the only native residents of Taiwan and the other groups migrated to Taiwan on various immigration waves (Sandel, 2003). The first immigration wave was the southern Min group who came to Taiwan around the 17th century from 1

Fujian province of China. They brought the southern Min dialect with them, and since then it has become the most dominant language in Taiwan. This southern Min dialect is then called Taiwanese to indicate the specific southern Min dialect spoken in Taiwan.

The second immigration wave was mainly composed of the Hakka group, who came to

Taiwan from the Guangdong province of China in the 18th century. During the first two immigration waves, Taiwan was ruled by the Ming and Qing dynasties of China, but the emperors then viewed Taiwan as a remote island. Therefore, besides a very limited number of the ruling class who spoke Guanghua (official language), most people in

Taiwan spoke Taiwanese, Hakka or aboriginal languages. However, during 1895-1945,

Taiwan was ceded to Japan due to the Treaty of Shimonoseki, and the Japanese government was committed to promoting Japanese as the official language in Taiwan.

Thus, during the Japanese colonization period, Japanese became the official language of

Taiwan and the medium of instruction. All other local languages were banned. Although

Japanese was the official language, most people still spoke their own native languages at home. However, elderly speakers who are above 80 years old and had the privilege to go to school did learn Japanese as a second language. After 50 years of Japanese colonization, Taiwan was returned to the China again because Japan lost in World War II.

However, the end of Japanese colonization did not make the local languages regain their status. The end of colonization and the Communist victory in China not only brought another immigration wave to Taiwan, but also brought a new language and a new language policy to the island. This time, the third immigration wave was people who fled to Taiwan with the National Party/ Kuomintang (KMT) due to the Communist victory.

This immigration wave was composed of people from various provinces of China. These immigrants were the previously mentioned mainlanders (also known as Waishengren, meaning people from other places/provinces). In contrast to the Waishengren are the

Benshengren (meaning people originally from this province), and these are the people who came to Taiwan before the third immigration wave. One important note is that the participants in this dissertation are all Minnanese Benshengren. Therefore, the discussion only focuses on Taiwanese and Guoyu, the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan.

Before the National Party retreated to Taiwan, there was a discussion of establishing a national language in China. Back then, the Nationalist government proposed that the national language to be based on Beijing dialect pronunciation and named "Guoyu" (literally meaning, national language). At the similar time, some other people proposed that the national language should be based on old "Guanhua" and named

"Putonghua" (meaning, common speech) in order to contrast with Beijing dialect-based

Guoyu (Norman, 1988). After the Chinese communist victory in 1949, the latter proposal was favored.

When the National Party retreated to Taiwan, in order to show the legitimacy of the

Nationalist government in Taiwan as the authorities of China, the leader of National

Party, Chiang Kai-shek, decided to set Guoyu as the national language in Taiwan.

Therefore, since 1945, Guoyu has become the official language and is the medium of instruction. During 1945 to 1987, when the Guoyu-only policy was implemented, it was also the only language that could be spoken for all formal and public occasions. All other languages were prohibited from being spoken in public (such as schools) again.

Since the National Party came to Taiwan, the Party took office for an extended period of time. Therefore, Guoyu, as the official language which is often associated with education, government and mass media, has a higher language status compared with other local languages. As Sandel, Chao and Liang (2006) stated, people who experienced

Guoyu-only policy perceived Guoyu to be high-class and Taiwanese to be low-class

(p.128). However, the social atmosphere is becoming more and more liberal in languages after the martial law was lifted in 1987. In 1999, President Lee (from the Nationalist party) announced that in order to raise awareness of local languages, primary schools would implement local languages curricula. Children can learn one of Taiwanese, Hakka or an aboriginal Austronesian language in school. This language policy is called the

Mother Tongue Language policy. In 2000, when the Democratic Progressive Party took office, the government was committed to improving the status of local languages. As a result, more and more universities in Taiwan now have departments of Taiwanese, which can also be seen as the revival of local languages. In addition, the public announcements of stops on the train lines or subway are now in both Guoyu and Taiwanese or all three of

Guoyu, Taiwanese and Hakka. The public announcements in multiple languages portray the multilingual status quo of Taiwan.

Nowadays, although local languages such as Taiwanese may still not have the same status as Guoyu, the perception toward Taiwanese is not as negative as it was before. In a more recent study, Chen (2010) stated that since the Mother Tongue Language policy was implemented, "research on Taiwanese has abounded, and demands for the use of the

Taiwanese ethnic languages have increased"(p.87). In her study, she also reported that

4 people think Taiwanese is the "language worth transmitting" and the "marker of solidarity" (p.92). Based on her large-scale questionnaire data, she suggests that the language ideology or attitude toward Taiwanese or other local languages have changed considerably since the Guoyu only policy.

1.2 Language Contact and Bilingualism

With several languages spoken in a society, it inevitably results in language contact. Language contact then leads to bilingualism or multilingualism. According to

Appel and Muysken (1987), there are two types of bilingualism. They are individual bilingualism and societal bilingualism. Individual bilingualism is more concerned about an individual's proficiency in the two languages and societal bilingualism is more about the distribution of the two languages in a given society or a group of people. According to Appel and Muysken (1987), "Societal bilingualism occurs when in a given society two or more languages are spoken "(p. 1).

Moreover, there are different forms of societal bilingualism based on the extent of individual bilingualism. In one form, two groups of people reside in one place but both groups are monolinguals. In this case, a few bilinguals help the communication between the two monolingual groups, but the dominant fact governing the distribution of the languages is group membership. At the other extreme is a form of societal bilingualism in which all people are bilinguals and the two languages are differentiated by the contexts in which they are used. The third form is the intermediate situation in which some large proportion of people are bilingual and another large proportion are monolinguals (Appel

& Muysken,1987).

As Appel and Muysken stated, the three scenarios mentioned above are just theoretical forms and there are various bilingual contexts. However, it is important to keep these situations in mind when describing a bilingual context. It is also important to note that the situation can change over time. This is particularly true of the societal bilingualism in Taiwan.

When Guoyu was first introduced to Taiwan, the situation was more similar to the first scenario where there were distinct groups of monolinguals and a small number of bilinguals. After the Guoyu-only policy was implemented by the National Party, the

Taiwan context became more like the second scenario where all people are bilingual but these bilinguals have different language proficiency of Guoyu and Taiwanese (or other local languages). Compared with the well-known language contact context of Catalonia, where Spanish and Catalan have co-existed for hundreds of years, Taiwan is a relatively unstable context in which Guoyu and Taiwanese have only been in contact for about sixty years. In addition, according to Bosch, Costa and Sebastian-Galles (2000), there are language policies to ensure Spanish and Catalan have equal status and are used in all levels of society in Catalonia. For example, children from a monolingual family can go to immersion program to learn Spanish or Catalan as young as four years old and Children by 12 years old need to have four language skills in both languages. Furthermore, in university, professors can choose to teach and give exams in Spanish or Catalan because all students are expected to have similar language proficiencies in both languages.

However, there are no such language policies to ensure Guoyu and Taiwanese have equal

6 status. Therefore, with contact for about sixty years and no language policies like those in

Catalonia, the language contact situation in Taiwan is relatively unstable.

Guoyu is a dialect of Mandarin and the pronunciation of this Mandarin is based on the dialect spoken in Beijing. Therefore, this northern Mandarin dialect is very different from southern Min, which is mainly spoken in the south. Although they both belong to the large Chinese language family, they are mutually unintelligible. Kubler (1980; 1985) suggests that due to the language contact of Guoyu and Taiwanese, some of the Mandarin features were weakened in Guoyu, and the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan became different from that spoken in mainland China.

In a language contact situation, it may result in contact-induced changes. Thomason and Kaufman (1988) stated that there are two types of contact-induced change/cross- linguistic transfer, depending on the direction of influence. They are substratum interference and borrowing. In one direction, substratum interference is a type of influence in which bilinguals transfer some features from their L1 to L2. In the other direction, borrowing is a type of transfer where bilinguals bring features of their L2 into their L1. The three generations of adults who now reside in Taiwan have either

Taiwanese or Guoyu as their L1 or L2. In addition, they also have different language dominance. Thus, this context provides a great opportunity to investigate how bilingual's

L1, L2 and language dominance influence their speech production and what type of contact-induced changes are involved in this context.

During the past several decades, various researchers have proposed several definitions in order to describe individual bilingualism. In this literature, three main

7 criteria are used to differentiate categories or degrees of individual bilingualisms: (1) age of acquisition, (2) language skills and (3) language proficiency (Baker, 2006).

By the first criterion of age of acquisition, bilinguals can be separated into early bilinguals and late bilinguals. However, there is no consensus on what counts as “early” in the definition of early bilinguals. Some researchers have proposed four as the cut-off age but others have proposed six or eight years old (Backer, 2006; Edwards, 2004;

Bialystok & Hakuta; 1994; Mack, 2003).

The second criterion refers to the four language skills of reading, listening, writing and speaking. Productive bilinguals are those who can write and speak in the language while perceptive bilinguals are those who can only read or comprehend the language by listening but are not able to produce the language (Edwards, 2004).

The last distinction is based on which language the bilinguals are more proficient in or use more frequently. Thus, bilinguals may have one language that is more dominant than the other, or someone may have the same level of proficiency in two languages to be a balanced bilingual.

In the present study, because the participants include both children and adults, the researcher chose "language proficiency" to categorize these bilinguals. However,

"language proficiency" in this study only refers to oral proficiency (and specifically, the relative extent of use of the two languages). The researcher chose this criterion to categorize bilinguals based on the following reasons. First, in Taiwan, most bilingual children have more or less input from Guoyu and Taiwanese at a young age. Thus, it makes it difficult to know which language a child starts to acquire first. On the other

8 hand, it is less feasible to test children and elderly participants' language skills because children have just started to learn Guoyu and Taiwanese and the elderly are all illiterate in both languages. Furthermore, Taiwanese does not have a writing system, which makes it impossible to test reading and writing skills. Therefore, language proficiency, which lets us categorize participants based on which language they tend to use more, is most appropriate for this research context.

To provide more detailed information about the four generations of participants in

Taiwan, this section introduces their age, education background and their language acquisition order. The first generation (the elderly group) acquired Taiwanese as their L1, and may have had some exposure to Japanese when they were young, but they do not speak Japanese anymore. When they have grandchildren, they learned some Guoyu vocabulary in order to communicate with their grandchildren but they have very low

Guoyu proficiency. Taiwanese is the primary language they speak. Therefore, based on the language proficiency criterion mentioned earlier, they are the most Taiwanese- dominant bilinguals. On the other hand, people who are in their fifties or sixties acquired

Taiwanese at home as L1, and Guoyu as L2 when they went to school at 7 years old.

However, most of them still prefer to speak Taiwanese. Thus, they are more Taiwanese dominant. Different from the older two groups, people who are in their twenties to forties have more equal access to Guoyu and Taiwanese and they have acquired both languages as their L1s. However, based on the language their family prefer to use, some of them are

Taiwanese-dominant while others are Guoyu-dominant. Last, the children in Taiwan are becoming more and more Guoyu-dominant.

As Sandel et al. (Sandel, Wen-Yu Chao, & Chung-Hui Liang, 2006) stated, Taiwan is experiencing a language shift from Taiwanese to Guoyu. In their study, they studied language use in several extended families, which included grandparents, parents and grandchildren. In their study, 40 percent of the participants lived in small towns in

Chang-hua or Taichung County and the rest of them lived in urban areas of Taichung

City or Taipei. They found that the "parents" generation used Taiwanese to the

"grandparents" generation but tended to use Guoyu to their children. In addition, they also reported that this language shift phenomenon is more common in urban areas than the rural areas. The participants in Sandel et al.'s study are mainly from Taichung, which is the central part of Taiwan. The geographic location of Taichung somehow serves as the dividing line of the orientation of using Guoyu or Taiwanese. People who live in the north of Taichung tend to use Guoyu more and those who live in the south tend to use

Taiwanese more. With people in central Taiwan starting to show a sign of language shift, it is interesting to see whether it is also true for those in the south where the study is conducted.

With only 60 years of languages contact, the four generations now residing on this island already have very different language experiences and language acquisition orders.

With all four generations recruited in the study, it will be possible to compare the productions of each generation. Table 1 summarizes the language acquisition order of the four generations of people reside in Taiwan.

Generations/ 1st generation 2nd generation 3rd generation 4th generation language Approximate 70-83 years old 41 -65 years old 20-40 years old 2-6 years old age ranges (born b/w1928 to (born b/w 1946- (born b/w 1971- (born b/w 2005- 1941) 1970) 1991) 2009) 1st & 2nd L1: Taiwanese L1:Taiwanese L1: Taiwanese L1: Guoyu and languages L2:Japanese/Guoyu L2: Guoyu and Guoyu Taiwanese

Table 1: Participants of four generations and their language background

1.3 Sibilants

Fricatives are produced by bringing two articulators together and making a constriction in the oral cavity while pushing air out to form turbulent noise. The hissing sound or "noise" is the main characteristic of fricatives. Fricatives, unlike other types of sounds such as stops, require a more precise control of the articulators. Ladefoged and

Maddieson (1996) stated that, "in a fricative a variation of one millimeter in the position of the target for the crucial part of the vocal tract makes a great deal of difference. There has to be a very precisely shaped channel for a turbulent airstream to be produced "(p.

137). The precision needed to produce fricatives is the reason why children usually acquire fricatives much later than they acquire stops.

Moreover, fricatives can be further divided into two sub-categories: sibilants and non-sibilants. The sibilants are fricatives, like the alveolar /s/ in the English word "sand", which have greater acoustic energy, and as a result are more audible than non-sibilant fricatives. By contrast, non-sibilant fricatives are sounds like /f/ in the English word

"fanned" which have less acoustic energy and are less audible. Thus, it is interesting to

11 know what acoustic cues adults use to decode sibilants and how children acquire this type of sound. Moreover, unlike vowels or stops, which are both acquired earlier in children' phonological acquisition, studies of sibilants remain scarce.

Guoyu has three sibilants but Taiwanese only has one. Table 2 provides the sibilant inventory of the two languages.

Language/place of Dental Alveolar Retroflex Alveopalatal articulation Denti-alveolar (coronal) (post-alveolar) Guoyu /s/ (/ʂ/)* /ɕ/ Taiwanese /s/=[s] /s/=[ɕ] Table 2: Sibilant inventories of Guoyu and Taiwanese based on Chung (1996) and Lin (2007).*/ʂ/ is unstable. Some people make the contrast while others do not. Guoyu has three voiceless sibilant fricatives. They are dental /s/, post-alveolar

(retroflex) /ʂ/ and alveopalatal [ɕ] (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996; Lin, 2007). On the other hand, Taiwanese only has one voiceless sibilant fricative /s/ and it is categorized as a coronal (Chung, 1996), which can be either dental or alveolar. The denti-alveolar cell in the Table 2 is used to represent this coronal /s/ in Taiwanese. Moreover, Taiwanese /s/ has two allophones, [s] and [ɕ]. Specifically, when Taiwanese /s/ is followed by the high front vowel /i/ or semi-vowel /j/, it is palatalized and is produced as [ɕ] (Chung, 1996) while [s] occurs elsewhere. According to Chung (1996), "the only Southern Min dialect which systematically exhibits palatalization is the Amoy (Xiamen) dialect" (p. 14). This

Amoy dialect is one of the dialects spoken in southern Taiwan where this study is conducted. Chung further stated that in this dialect, "palatalization is in free variation with non-palatalization"(p. 15). Therefore, the researcher follows Chung's statement by categorizing [ɕ] as an allophone of Taiwanese /s/ in palatalizing context.

Similarly, Guoyu has an alveopalatal /ɕ/, which is produced as [ɕ] too. The Guoyu alveopalatal /ɕ/ stimulated many discussions on how to categorize it (as a phoneme or an allophone). Lin (2007) stated that alveopalatals are "in complementary distribution with three sets of consonants: the dental affricates/fricative, the post-alveolar affricates/fricative, and the velars "(p. 48). The alveopalatals occur only before the high front vowels and semi-vowels /i, y, j, ɥ/, where the other three sets of sounds never occur.

Compared with the status of [ɕ] in Taiwanese, in which it is clear that [ɕ] is an allophone of /s/, the complementary distribution of Guoyu alveopalatals with three other sets of sounds make it more difficult to determine whether the Guoyu alveopalatal is an allophone or not. If it is, it is also difficult to determine which one of the three sets of sounds is the base form for the Guoyu alveopalatal. Therefore, in this study, the researcher categorizes Guoyu alveopalatal as a phoneme. As a result, Guoyu has a three- way contrast among the sibilants.

Last, as in many other varieties of Mandarin spoken in areas of China outside of

Beijing, the /s/ versus /ʂ/ contrast in Guoyu is very unstable. Despite the fact that there is a prescriptivist emphasis on mastering the contrast between /s/ and /ʂ/ in primary education, some speakers do not make any contrast between /s/ and /ʂ/. Thus, the mismatched sibilant inventories provide the opportunity to examine first, how bilinguals match the only Taiwanese sibilant to the three sibilants system of Guoyu and vice versa and second, how bilingual children acquire sibilants of these two languages.

1.4 Research Questions

(1) Guoyu /s/ is a dental sibilant while Taiwanese /s/ is categorized as a coronal sibilant (Chung, 1996), which can be either dental or alveolar. Is Guoyu /s/ phonetically the same as Taiwanese /s/=[s]? If not, how do bilinguals of different generations treat the two sounds? Do they differentiate the two kinds of /s/ or do they assimilate one to the other, and if the latter, do they assimilate Guoyu /s/ to Taiwanese /s/ or the other way around?

(2) Guoyu alveolo-palatal /ɕ/ and the palatalized allophone of Taiwanese /s/ are both produced as [ɕ]. Phonetically, is Guoyu /ɕ/ the same as Taiwanese [ɕ]? If not, how do bilinguals of different generations differentiate or assimilate them?

(3) As in many other varieties of Mandarin spoken in areas of China outside of

Beijing, the /s/ versus /ʂ/ contrast in Guoyu is very unstable, and there is a prescriptivist emphasis on mastering the contrast in teaching Guoyu in primary education. Bilinguals of the three generations have different language acquisition experiences. Do bilinguals of different generations distinguish Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/?

(4) What are these bilingual children's acquisition patterns of the sibilants? Which sound is acquired earlier and which sound is acquired later? Are there any patterns that are similar to monolingual children's patterns?

(5) Do children make a contrast among the Guoyu sibilants? If they do, are their patterns more like young, middle-aged or elderly adults?

1.5 Contribution

This study aims to investigate (1) the interaction between adult bilinguals' L1 and

L2 on their fricative production and (2) bilingual children' acquisition of fricatives. With

14 data collected from four generations of bilinguals, this study can provide more insight in the long-lasting debate on whether bilinguals store their two languages in one common space or two separated spaces. The data collected from children can also help us understand bilingual children's phonological acquisition and how it may be similar or different from monolingual children. Since these bilinguals are in a language contact context, this study can also provide some evidence on how bilinguals' production may change over time due to language contact. In conclusion, the results of the study can contribute to our understanding of bilingualism.

1.6 Definition of Terms

1.6.1 Bilinguals

Considerable definitions have been proposed to describe bilinguals. According to

Appel and Muysken (1987), two extremes of definitions have been proposed in the study of bilingualism. (1) Bloomfield defines that a bilingual is someone who has "native-like control of two or more languages"(1933, p56). (2) Macnamara (1969) defines that a bilingual is someone who has "some second-language skills in one of the four modalities"(p. 3). Both definitions involved in evaluating language "proficiency" and it is difficult to find a general criterion to evaluate this psychological term, proficiency.

Therefore the researcher uses Appel and Muysken (1987) and Grosjean's (1985) definitions that "bilingualism is the regular use of two (or more) languages, and bilinguals are those people who need and use two (or more) languages in their everyday lives”(p. 468). Although, based on this definition, bilinguals may still have different commands of the two languages but since they are those who need and use both

15 languages in their daily life, it is more likely to separate them from people who are learning another language in a foreign language context.

1.6.2 Second language acquisition

The researcher follows Gass and Selinker's (2008) definition that second language acquisition "refers to the process of learning of another language after the native language has been learned" (p.7 ). The native language means "the first language a child learns. It is also known as the primary language, the mother tongue" (p.7). Therefore, second language acquisition includes the language learning in a classroom and in a more natural context. Therefore, language learners, immigrants or people in a language contact situation are both included in this definition.

1.6.3 Language contact

Based on Thomason (2001), " language contact means the use of more than one language in the same place at the same time" but at least "some people use more than one language"(p. 1). Therefore, the researcher uses language contact to mean in a given context, two or more languages are spoken by the same group of speakers.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

The chapter is divided into five sections: first, a short introduction to fricatives and more specifically Guoyu and Taiwanese sibilants; second, monolingual and bilingual children's acquisition of fricatives; third, acoustic measures of fricatives; fourth, factors and hypothesis that are relevant to adults' productions in a second language; fifth, factors that influence sound changes.

2.1 Guoyu and Taiwanese Sibilants

This section includes the descriptions of consonants of vowels for Putonghua,

Guoyu and Taiwanese and the articulatory gestures of the sibilants of the target languages. This information serves as the background information in the later review of monolingual and bilingual children's acquisition of fricatives or sibilants.

Table 3 and 4 show the consonants and vowels for standard Putonghua based on

Lee and Zee (2003), Lin (2007), and Zhou (1991). Standard Putonghua has three sets of two series of voiceless stops. That is, there are two stops at each of three places of articulation, and the stops at each place contrast in aspiration. In addition, Putonghua has three sets of voiceless affricates, with a two-way contrast in aspiration for each set, and five voiceless fricatives. Putonghua has three nasals [m], [n] and [ŋ]. In syllable-final position, only [n] and [ŋ] are allowed. [m] and [n] are both allowed to occur in syllable- initial position but not [ŋ]. Last, [ʐ] or [ɹ] is the sound at the beginning of the word

"person" as in Pinyin "ren" but different scholars use different symbols for this sound. 17

Bilabial Labio- Dental Post- Palatal Velar dental alveolar Stop p ph t th k kh h Affricate ts ts h h tʂ tʂ tɕ tɕ Nasal m n ŋ Fricative f s 1 ɕ x ʂ (ʐ) Approximant w 1 j (ɹ) Lateral l Approximant Table 3: Standard Putonghua consonants

Front Central Back unrounded rounded unrounded rounded High i y 2 u ɨ (ʅ ɿ) o Mid e ə ɤ ɛ Low a Table 4: Standard Putonghua vowels Standard Putonghua has high front unrounded vowel [i] and high front rounded vowel [y]. The vowel [ɤ] has a place of articulation that is further back than [ə]. In the high central vowel cell, a symbol that is used in IPA is [ɨ] which is the vowel for the word

"wet" ([ʂ ɨ]/[ ʂ ʅ]) or the word "silk" ([s ɨ]/[s ɿ]) . The two symbols in the parentheses in

Table 4 are used by Chinese linguists to mean apical vowels and are combined with dental sibilants and affricates or retroflex sibilants or affricates as shown in the above examples (Lee & Zee, 2003). However, in the word list provided in Chapter 3, the researcher chose [ɨ] to represent the central vowel in the above examples. In addition, the diphthongs or triphthongs of Putonghua include [ai au ia ua ye ei ie ou uo ua iau uai uei iou]. Last, there are four tones in Putonghua .

Bilabial Labio- Dental Post- Palatal Velar dental alveolar (retroflex) Plosive p ph t th k kh h Affricate ts ts h 1 h tʂ tʂ tɕ tɕ Nasal m n ŋ 4 Fricative f s 1 2 ɕ x ʂ (ʐ) Approximant w 2 3 j (ɹ) Lateral l 3 Approximant Table 5: Standard Guoyu consonants The consonant table for standard Guoyu is the same as that of standard Putonghua.

However, based on Lin (2007), there are several differences between textbook pronunciations and real-life pronunciations. First, although in textbook, and in primary education, there is an emphasis in mastering the contrast between dental fricatives and affricates ( [s] [ts] [tsh] ) and post-alveolar/retroflex fricatives and affricates ( [ʂ] [tʂ]

[tʂh]), the contrast is unstable. Some speakers make the contrast while others do not.

Moreover, among those who make a contrast, there are also different degrees of retroflexization (Jeng, 2002). [ʐ] or [ɹ] is the sound for the word "person" as in Pinyin

"ren" but different scholars use different symbols for this sound. For same speakers, there is a merge of [ʐ] / [ɹ] with [l] (as in the word "blue" [lan]). For instance, the word "ren"

[ʐən] is pronounced as [lən] by some speakers. Last, the velar nasal in syllable final position is often produced as [n] instead.

The vowel table is the same as that for standard Putonghua but there are also some differences in pronunciations too. Guoyu speakers substitute rimes such as [iŋ] and [ɛŋ] by [in] and [ɛn]. Moreover, Taiwanese speakers usually use [ɔŋ] for [əŋ]. For instance,

19 the word "wind" is usually pronounced as [fɔŋ] instead of the textbook pronunciation

[fəŋ]. Last, the same as Putonghua, Guoyu has four tones.

Bilabial Coronal Post- Palatal Velar Glottal (Denti- alveolar alveolar) Stops b p ph t th g k kh ʔ Affricate ts tsh dz1 Nasal m n ŋ Fricative s h (ɕ) Approximant w l 1 j Lateral Approximant Table 6: Standard Taiwanese consonants Unlike standard Putonghua, Taiwanese has a three-way phonation type contrast in bilabial and velar stops and a two-way contrast in coronal stops (as shown in Table 6).

Moreover, the voiceless stops occur in coda position in checked syllables (i.e., syllables with one or the other of the two “entering” tones), where Taiwanese also has a glottal stop. Compared with Putonghua, Taiwanese has a relatively simple fricative inventory, a voiceless sibilant fricative [s] and a voiceless non-sibilant [h]. The sound [ɕ] is put in parentheses because it is usually analyzed as an allophone of /s/ in palatalizing contexts.

Moreover, [b l g] and [m n ŋ] are in complementary distribution. The former occurs before oral vowels and the latter occurs before nasal vowels. According to Chung 1996, some speakers distinguish [dz] and [l] while others do not. Last, Taiwanese also has three nasals [m], [n] and [ŋ]. The three nasals are all allowed in syllable final position and they are in complementary distribution with [p], [t] and [k] in syllable final position. The nasals can occur in syllable final position with any of the six tones that also occur on

20 open syllables, while [p] [t] and [k] occur with the two so-called “entering” tones (Chung,

1996).

Different from Putonghua, Taiwanese have several nasalized vowels as shown in

Table 7. Due to the addition of nasalized vowels, Taiwanese has more diphthongs and triphthongs combinations. There are oral diphthongs or triphthongs [ai au ia io iu ui ue ua iau uai] and nasalized diphthongs or triphthongs include [ ].

Front Central Back unrounded unrounded rounded High u

o Mid ɔ ɔ

Low

Table 7: Standard Taiwanese vowels Among the consonants just described, the fricatives are of focus of this study.

Fricatives are produced by bringing two articulators together and forming a narrow constriction in the oral cavity. The places of articulation of fricatives refer to the location where the narrowest constriction is made. In addition, fricatives can be further divided into two subclasses, sibilants and non-sibilants. As Ladefoged (2006) points out, "a slightly better way of dividing fricatives is to separate them into groups on a purely auditory basis"(p. 170). Therefore, the sibilants, such as English /s/ in "sand", have "more acoustic energy" and "greater loudness" (p.170) and non-sibilants are those such as /f/ in the word "fanned". Before going to the more detailed discussion of the Guoyu and

Taiwanese sibilants, it is important to introduce how the articulators are defined, especially the tongue. According to Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996), the tongue can be

21 divided into three main parts: tip, blade and body. The tongue tip includes the area from the beginning of the tongue to about 2 mm area of the upper surface (p. 10). Articulations that are made with the tip of the tongue are named, apical. The blade of the tongues goes from 2mm after the tongue tip and extends to the area that is below the alveolar ridge.

Sounds produced with the tongue blade are called, laminal. In addition, articulations made with the tip and the blade of the tongue are termed coronal to contrast with the sounds made with the body of tongue, namely, dorsal. Based on the aforementioned definitions, English /s/, which is categorized as an apical dental/alveolar fricative, indicates that the tongue tip makes a constriction toward the upper teeth or the alveolar ridge.

Guoyu has three voiceless sibilant fricatives but Taiwanese only has one. Several studies have provided the descriptions of Mandarin sibilants but the data for these studies were mainly collected from speakers from mainland China. Although, the data were from mainland Mandarin, the descriptions are very useful in understanding Guoyu, which is a dialect of Mandarin. Therefore, in this section, the researcher uses Mandarin as an umbrella term to review the relevant studies about Mandarin sibilants.

Mandarin has three sibilants, /s/, /ʂ/ and /ɕ/. The place of articulation of /s/ has been categorized as either dental (Chao, 1968; Lin, 2007) or alveolar (Ladefoged & Wu, 1984;

Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). Like English /s/, which is produced as either apical- dental or apical-alveolar, the differences may result from individual differences. As

Ladeforge and Maddieson (1996) stated, "it is often difficult to be sure whether sibilants in this area are dental or alveolar "(p.146) and as a result we may say that the Mandarin

/s/ is produced by the tip of the tongue and "has a constriction located close to the teeth"

(p.152). Moreover, Mandarin /s/ is usually produced with a hollowing of the tongue.

The so-called retroflex /ʂ/ is a flat laminal post-alveolar sibilant (Ladefoged &

Maddieson, 1996; Ladefoged & Wu, 1984) or as Lee (1999) stated, an apical post- alveolar. Several researchers have stated that the name "retroflex" is somehow misleading

(Jeng, 2002; Ladefoged & Wu, 1984; Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). Jeng (2002), for instance, stated that the name "retroflex" implies that the tip of tongue is raised up toward the alveolar ridge. However, /ʂ/ is actually produced with the tongue forming a dome shape and the constriction made with the blade of tongue near the alveolar ridge.

Moreover, when producing /ʂ/, the tongue is pulled slightly backwards and forms a sublingual cavity. The extra space from the sublingual cavity usually makes the area before constriction larger and results in a lower frequency spectral peak for /ʂ/.

Lastly, Mandarin /ɕ/ is a palatalized post-alveolar/alveopalatal sibilant produced by raising the tongue blade and the body of the tongue toward the palatal and then forming a long, flat constriction (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). There are different terminologies for sibilants produced at the post-alveolar area, including post-alveolar, alveopalatal or retroflex. The various terminologies signal the lack of finer categorization of sounds produced in this area. Due to the inconsistent naming, researchers have different opinions on the places of articulation for the retroflex and the alveopalatal. As Jeng (2002) and Lin

(2007) noted, in terms of place of articulation, /s/ has the most anterior place among the three. /ʂ/ is more anterior than /ɕ/. However, Ladefoged and Wu (1984), Ladefoged and

Maddieson (1996) and Toda and Honda (2003) stated that /ʂ/ has the most posterior place

23 of articulation among the three sibilants. The inconsistency may partially result from the lack of finer categorization of sibilants produced in this area. Or as Ladefoged and

Maddieson (1996) noted in terms of where the constriction is made, the difference between /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ is very small. One other possibility is that the inconsistency comes from the data drawn for those studies. Jeng (2002) is the only study that has participants from Taiwan while others have data from Putonghua speakers.

Jeng (2002) in her study that compares the retroflex and non-retroflex series of fricatives and affricates found that Guoyu speakers still have the retroflex feature.

However, the retroflex feature is weakened in Guoyu compared with that of Putonghua.

Moreover, she also stated that the retroflex sound made by Putonghua speakers is further back than that of Guoyu. As a result, this might be the reason why some studies stated that /ʂ/ has the most posterior place of articulation. To sum up, Guoyu /s/ contrasts with

Guoyu /ʂ/ by place of articulation and Guoyu /ɕ/ contrasts with the previous two sibilant by tongue posture.

Contrary to Guoyu which has a relatively more complex sibilant inventory,

Taiwanese only has one sibilant: /s/. The Taiwanese /s/ is categorized as a coronal /s/

(Chung 1996). Furthermore, when Taiwanese /s/ is followed by high front vowel /i/ or semi-vowel /j/, the Taiwanese /s/ is palatalized and produced as [ɕ] (Chung, 1996). In other words, in Taiwanese [ɕ] and [s] are both allophones of /s/ where [ɕ] only occurs before the high front vowel /i/ or semi-vowel /j/ but [s] can appear elsewhere.

Therefore, the mismatched sibilants provide a great opportunity to investigate how bilinguals' L1 and L2 interact with each other and how the interaction manifests on their speech production.

2.2 Children's Acquisition of Fricatives

One important debate about bilinguals is whether bilinguals store their two languages in one common space or two separated spaces. Considerable research has been done to provide evidence for this long-lasting debate. Researchers who are interested in bilingual children's phonological acquisition have also conducted many studies in order to understand the acquisition process. Most studies are devoted to understanding children's acquisition of vowels and stops, which are the two types of sounds that are acquired earlier in phonological acquisition. However, less attention is given to fricatives, which are acquired much later by children because it requires a better control of the tongue in order to produce it. Moreover, fricatives, especially a subgroup, sibilants, have a higher frequency in the power spectrum. With human hearing is more sensitive in 2000-

5000Hz, it is interesting to know how children decode sibilants with much higher energy range and acquire them.

Ever since Jakobson (1968) published his influential work and proposed the law of irreversible solidarity (p.51), considerable research has been conducted to test the implication law. Jakobson (1968) in his pioneering work about children’s language acquisition stated that children around the world had similar patterns in phonological acquisition. The first vowel children acquire is [a] and the first consonant they acquired is one “labial” sound. In this work, he further proposed the “the general law of irreversible

25 solidarity” (p.51) which predicted the acquisition order of sounds. For example, the acquisition of fricative presupposes the acquisition of stops and “the former can’t exist unless the latter exist as well” (p. 51). In other words, when children acquired fricatives, it also implied their acquisition of stops. However, the acquisition of stops does not imply their acquisition of fricatives. Moreover, based on the place of articulation, Jakobson also stated that,

“the acquisition of back consonants presupposes in the linguistic development of

the child the acquisition of the front consonants, i.e., labials and dentals; and, in

particular, the acquisition of back oral and nasal stops presupposes the acquisition

of front oral and nasal consonants. Similarly, the acquisition of back fricatives

presupposes the acquisition of front fricatives” (p. 53).

Locke (1983) further stated that the acquisition of back consonants presupposes the acquisition of front consonants. After Jakobson's influential work, many studies have been done for vowels and stops. However, less research is conducted for fricatives. In the following section, the review is organized first by monolingual children's acquisition of fricatives and then bilingual children's acquisition of fricatives. Research can be grouped into four main categories based on the time a study involved and the analysis method of a study.

In terms of the time span of the study, children's phonological acquisition can be divided into longitudinal or cross-sectional studies. Longitudinal study as the name suggests, usually involves in following one or two children for certain period of time.

Longitudinal studies can provide detailed information on one child's acquisition within

26 certain time span but it is harder to provide a macro view of the phonological acquisition. On the other hand, cross-sectional studies, which usually involves recruiting many children from various ages, can provide a norm of children's phonological acquisition. As Ingram (1975) pointed out, this type of study can provide an "age norm for the acquisition of sounds" (p.65), but it is difficult to know an individual child's sound system.

In terms of data analysis methods, transcription is the most popular data analysis method. The purpose of transcription is to determine whether children acquired a sound or not based on the norm of adult speakers of the target language. The analysis method is popular because it can provide researchers a faster way to categorize children's production. However, the shortcoming is that native speakers' transcriptions are often influenced by their perception. Speech perception is then affected by language experiences. Therefore, to overcome the possible bias, Edwards and Beckman (2008) proposed to include acoustic analysis along with transcription when analyzing children's productions. By using acoustic analyses, researchers are able to observe any subtle differences in children's productions that are not detectable by adults' ears. Several recent studies echo with their proposals by including acoustic analyses.

The most studied child population is probably the monolingual English-acquiring children. Earlier studies such as Ferguson (1973), Ingram (1975) and Edwards (1979) reviewed several diary studies or conducted small-scale transcription studies in order to find out children' s acquisition pattern. They found that English /s/ is acquired earlier than /ʃ/. On the other hand, a large scale cross-sectional study by Ingram, Christensen,

Veach and Webster (1980) elicited children's productions in spontaneous speech and imitation showed that /ʃ/ is acquired before /s/. However, another large scale of study conducted by Smit, Hand, Freilinger, Bernthal, and Bird (1990) showed the opposite acquisition order. The differences among these studies may result from the data analysis method, transcription, as well as different data elicitation methods, spontaneous speech, imitation or picture-naming task. More recent studies usually include transcription and acoustic analysis, for instance, Nittrouer (1995), Nittrouer, Studdert-Kennedy and

McGowan (1988a) , Nissen and Fox (2005) and Li, Edwards and Beckman (2009).

These studies show that children acquire /s/ before /ʃ/. However, the acoustic results show that children at around 5 years or 6 years old are still fine-tuning their sibilants toward adults' norm.

Several other studies that focus on children with other language backgrounds include Eblen (1982), Spanish acquiring children; Amayreh and Dyson (1998), Arabic acquiring children; Li (1977), Jeng (1979), Guoyu acquiring children and Hua and Dodd

(2000) and Li (2009), Putonghua acquiring children. The non-Putonghua acquiring children's studies revealed that /s/ is not acquired until 4 or much later. However, the

Guoyu and Putonghua acquiring children have slightly different patterns. Li (1977) and

Jeng (1979) both conducted longitudinal studies. Li followed two Guoyu-acquiring children, one from 2;0 (year;month)-3;0 and the other from 1;1-1;8. On the other hand,

Jeng observed two children, one from 0;2-1;8 and the other from 1;3-2;7. Due to the age difference of these children, by the end of data collection, the authors only stated that

Guoyu /s/ is acquired earlier than /ʂ/. Judging by the children recruited in those studies, it

28 seems that /s/ is acquired slightly earlier than non-Mandarin acquiring children. But both of them do not mention the acquisition of the alveopalatal /ɕ/. Contrary to the two Guoyu studies, Hua and Dodd (2000) and Li's (2009) Putonghua acquiring children are both large-scale studies and with a more defined operational term of "mastery". Hua and Dodd

(2000) recruited 129 monolingual children from 1;6 to 4;6 and elicited productions by picture-naming task and their production were analyzed by transcription. In their study, they proposed two terms, phoneme emergence and phoneme stabilization. Hua and Dodd stated that, “a phoneme was considered to have emerged when 90% of the children in an age group produce the sound at least once” (p. 16). On the other hand, phoneme stabilization means,

“When the child produces the sound correctly on at least two of three

opportunities. When 90% of the children in an age group achieved an accuracy

rating of at least 66.7% (2/3) for a phoneme, the phoneme would be considered to

have been stabilized for the age group” (p.17).

Their results show that /ɕ/ is acquired before /s/ and then followed by/ ʂ / (/ɕ/>/s/>/ʂ/).

On the other hand, Li (2009) collected data from 40 children from 2 to 5 years old by a repetition task. She defined that a sound is acquired when a child can produce a sound with 75 percent accuracy. Based on her transcription and acoustic analysis data, she reported that children acquired /ɕ/ first followed by /ʂ/ and the last one is /s/. It shows that /ɕ/ is acquired first but there is inconsistency between the other two sibilants. The inconsistency among various studies may result from data collection methods such as picture-naming, imitation or naturally produced speech or data analysis method such as

29 transcription or acoustic analysis as well as the definition of "acquired" or "mastery".

Based on the above studies, it seems to suggest that children's acquisition order cannot be explained solely from the implicational law because some back sibilants are acquired earlier than front sibilants. Several researchers did propose various hypotheses to explain the language specific differences. For instance, Amayreh and Dyson (1998) proposed sound frequency and perceptual saliency might contribute to the order of acquisition. Similarly, Hua and Dodd (2000) also stated that saliency may be the factor.

However, their definition of saliency differs slightly from that of Amayreh and Dyson

(1998) in that for them, saliency means the number of options. For example, Mandarin has 4 tones but 21 consonants. Therefore, tone is a more salient feature and as a result, children acquired tone first then consonants. Last, Edwards and Beckman (2008) as well as Li (2009) proposed phoneme frequency, which is similar to Amayreh and Dyson's

(1998) proposal. They stated that with higher phoneme frequency, children have more opportunities to have input from a particular sound. Thus, children acquire some sounds earlier than others.

Various explanatory proposals, divergent data collection methods and different definitions of mastery show the difficulty and complexity in child-related research. The aforementioned studies are about monolingual children. When two languages interact with each other, it is interesting to know whether there are any patterns in bilingual children's acquisition. If there are some patterns, are they consistent or inconsistent with monolingual children's results?

The following studies are organized based on the types of bilinguals. Goldstein and Washington (2001), Keshavarz and Ingram (2002) and Brulard and Carr (2003) all study simultaneous bilingual children. Goldstein and Washington (2001) focused on a group English-Spanish children from 4;0 to 4;11 and elicited productions with photo naming task. They concluded that at 4 years old, children's /s/ and /z/ are still not adult like. Although both language have /s/, these bilinguals were using different strategies in producing /s/ of the two languages. This finding reveals that children at this young age have realized they were learning two languages and were using different strategies to produces the target sibilants. Keshavarz and Ingram (2002) and Brulard and Carr (2003) are both one-child case studies with different observation time. Keshavarz and Ingram

(2002) followed a Farsi-English acquiring child from 0;8 to 2;0 and found that the sounds this child tend to produce such as /s/, /ʃ/ and /z/ are the sibilants that both existed in two languages. In Brulard and Carr (2003) study, they also showed that up to 2;5, the

English-French acquiring child produce /s/and /ʃ/ more often than /z/ and /v/ and they concluded that the pattern is similar to monolingual English acquiring children.

Ball, Muller and Munro (2001), Law and So (2006) and Gildersleeve-Neumann, Kester,

Davis and Pena (2008) used another definition, language ability, to study dominant or balanced bilinguals. These three studies are all large-scale studies and the first two studies use language questionnaires to determine children's language dominance. The key result across these three studies is that children usually acquire the fricatives of their dominant language earlier than those of the non-dominant language. Law and So (2006) researched 100 Cantonese-Putonghua acquiring children ages from 2;6 to 4;11. The

31 criterion they used to determine the order of acquisition in the cross-sectional study is

“each phoneme was considered emerged when 90 percent or more of the children in an age group produced the phoneme correctly in correct position at least twice”(p. 411).

The acquisition order they found is the same as the Li's (2008) study. Moreover, the same as Ball et al.'s (2001) study, children who are Putonghua-dominant acquired

Putonghua fricatives earlier than Cantonese-dominant children.

2.3 Acoustic Measures of Fricatives

As previously described, sibilants usually have higher energies in power spectrum and are acquired later by children. Due to the nature of sibilants, researchers over the past few decades have used various acoustic measures to try to categorize sibilants. Some of the measures used include noise duration, spectral peak or the lowest spectral frequency of the noise portion of the fricatives/sibilants. However, as Jeng (2002) pointed out, these measures only provide partial information of the sibilants. A more commonly used measure that can provide more thorough information of the spectral information of the sibilants is the spectral moment analysis first proposed by Forrest, Weismer, Milenkovic and Dougall (1988). The spectral moment analysis has been shown to be effective in describing voiceless consonants such as stops and fricatives. Forrest et al. (1998) viewed the power spectrum of the fricatives as a probability distribution and then calculated the four mathematical moments. The four mathematical moments are mean or centroid (M1), variance/standard deviation (M2), skewness (M3) and Kurtosis (M4). With these four moments, it is possible to describe the distribution of the energy of the spectrum.

The first moment (M1) or centroid is the weighed mean frequency of the spectra. If a sibilant has most energy in the higher frequencies, it will have a higher centroid compared with a sibilant that has the majority of its energy in the lower frequency range.

The second moment (M2) is the variance or standard deviation. It represents how spread the energy is from the mean. If a sibilant has energy spreads across various frequency ranges, then the M2 will be larger. The third moment, skewness (M3), shows where the majority of the energy is relative to the mean. Generally speaking, if the M3 value is positive, it means an energy concentration in the frequencies below the mean. On the other hand, a negative value of M3 is an indication that energy concentration is in the frequencies above the mean. Jongman, Wayland and Wong (2000) stated that phonetically speaking, skewness also refers to spectral tilt (p. 1253). Last, the fourth moment (M4) , Kurtosis, shows how peaky the distribution is. The higher the value of

M4, the peakier the distribution. In addition, a higher value of M4 also indicates that most of the energy is concentrated near the mean. On the other hand, the smaller the M4 is, the flatter the distribution. As Jongman et al. stated, "the spectral moment metric thus incorporates both local (spectral peak) and more global (spectral shape) information"(p.1253) and as a result can provide more information of the spectra.

After Forrest et al. proposed this method, several researchers adopted this method to find out which measure (M1~M4) can best help differentiate fricatives. The majority of the studies focused on English fricatives. For instance, M1 has been shown to be effective in separating English /s/ from /ʃ/ (Nittrouer, 1989, 1995; Fox et al., 2005; Nissen

& Fox, 2005; Jongman et al., 2000). In Nittrouer's studies, she found that adults use M1

33 to differentiate English /s/ and /ʃ/. She also found that children use the same cue to distinguish the sibilants but the magnitude they use to differentiate the sibilants is not as large as that of adults. In addition, Flipsen Jr. and Shriberg (1999) also found that M1 is useful in describing English /s/. Moreover, they sampled data at different time points of the sibilants and indicated that the middle point of the sibilants is a more reliable sampling point. The M2, on the other hand, is not very useful in distinguishing English sibilants but it is helpful in differentiating English sibilant from non-sibilant as shown by

(Jongman et al., 2000 ; Nissen et al., 2005).

On the other hand, M3 and M4 have more mixed effects in separating English sibilants. For instance, Fox et. al (2005) shows that M3 and M4 are statistically different between /f θ/ and /s ʃ/ but M3 can also separate /s/ from /ʃ/. Nittrouer (1995) stated that

M3 revealed a slightly positive skew for /ʃ/ as compared to /s/ and M4 revealed a flatter distribution for /ʃ/ than that of /s/.

If a measure can differentiate English /s/ from /ʃ/, it may be helpful in distinguishing Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/. The contrast between Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/ is like that of

English /s/ and /ʃ/ because the contrast is between places of articulation.

The aforementioned measures are from the noise portion of the sibilants. One other measure, which is taken at the consonant-vowel boundary, has also been shown to be effective in differentiating sibilants. This measure is the onset of the second formant frequency (F2) of the following vowel. Stevens, Li, Lee, and Keyser (2004) compared

Mandarin sibilants before low vowel /a/ and found that the alveopalatal has the highest

F2 value. Two studies that looked at Japanese /s/ and /ɕ/ also found that /ɕ/ has higher F2

( Funatsu & Kiritani, 1994; Tsurutani, 2004 ). Thus, onset F2 may be helpful in separating Guoyu /ɕ/ with other two sibilants because the contrast is mainly about tongue posture which is similar to that between Japanese /s/ and /ɕ/.

Two studies that are relevant to Mandarin sibilants are Jeng (2002) and Li (2008).

Jeng (2002) studied Guoyu speakers' productions of two pairs of sounds, retroflex /ʂ,tʂ/ and the dental/s,ts/. She found that all four moments are statistically significant in differentiating retroflex sounds from non-retroflex sounds. She stated that M1 is higher for non-retroflex series but M2 is higher for the retroflex series. Retroflex sounds have positive skewness and flatter distributions. One important note is that in her study, she combined fricatives and affricates. Therefore, it may only provide a general idea of how retroflex sounds are different from non-retroflex ones. Li (2008) studied Putonghua speaking adults and she found that among the measures, M1 alone is sufficient in distinguishing /s/ from /ʂ/. On the other hand, the alveopalatal is separated from /s/ and /ʂ/ by M1 and onset F2.

2.4 Speech Productions in Second Language Acquisition

In second language acquisition (SLA), foreign accent is one of the major topics. A bilingual who learns another language as L2 can be easily identified as "non-native" based on his productions. This non-native accent often comes from cross-linguistic influence. This influence has stimulated considerable research and scholars have proposed different hypotheses in order to account for it. This review only focuses on studies or hypotheses that are relevant to bilinguals who use their languages on a daily basis.

By observing children who do not acquire languages within certain period of time and resulting in unsuccessful language acquisition, Lenneberg (1967) proposed his biological constraint hypothesis, the critical period hypothesis (CPH). Lenneberg’s CPH had a biological maturation base and he proposed that there is a limited window to learn languages. This duration “begins around two and declines with cerebral maturation in the early teens” (p. 376). In other words, he thought before puberty language acquisition is very easy, but after puberty the ability to acquire languages will show abrupt decline.

This hypothesis is first proposed for first language acquisition but is then borrowed into second language acquisition to account for L2 learners' difficulty in achieving native- like proficiency. However, his proposal is contradicted by evidence that some late L2 learners still attain native-like proficiency for instance Birdsong (2006).

Although, age alone may not account for L2 learners' proficiency, it is true that in some language domains, earlier is better such as speech production. For instance, Guion

(2003) investigated Quichua-Spanish bilinguals who learned their L2 at different age

(simultaneous, early, mid and late) and their productions of the vowels of the two languages. Guion found that simultaneous and early bilinguals are able to establish vowel categories for both Quichua and Spanish. In addition, in order to accommodate to all vowel categories, these bilinguals produced their Quichua vowels higher in order to have enough space for Spanish vowels. The results of the study suggest that with an earlier age of acquisition, it is more likely that learners are able to establish finer-grained sound categories.

Flege in his influential work proposed that learners' ability to "acquire a new category remain intact"(Flege, 1987) but it is the classification equivalence that prevents learners from establishing a new category for their L2. When there are similar sounds between L1 and L2, the classification equivalence filters the similar L2 sounds as divergent L1 examples and categorizes them into their L1 category. As a result, learners are not able to acquire the similar L2 sounds and would use their L1 sounds for L2.

However, Flege stated that with more input from L2, L2 learners will eventually notice the differences and establish a new category for L2 similar sounds. Since then, Flege and his colleges have conducted considerable research to test this hypothesis. In Flege

(1987), he studied English-French bilinguals and focused on their productions of English

/t/, /u/ and French /t/ and /y/. He found that for similar phones across two languages, even very experienced L2 speakers used the sound from their L1 for that of L2.

Moreover, these bilinguals' productions gradually shift toward an intermediate category between the two similar sounds. Thus, he concluded that language influence is not uni- directional but bi-directional. Peng (1993) adopted Flege's hypothesis and studied

Mandarin-Taiwanese bilinguals in Taiwan. In her study, bilinguals with different language proficiency produced Mandarin [f] (a new phone for Taiwanese speakers) and

Mandarin [x] (a similar phone with Taiwanese [h]). She found that the most proficient bilinguals show bi-directional influence between L1 and L2.

Several studies have identified factors that affect L2 productions (Thompson,

1991; McAllister, Flege & Piske, 2002; Piske, MacKay & Flege, 2001). The researchers found that when age is controlled, the amount of L1 use often affects bilinguals'

37 production. Since then, several studies were conducted to compare bilinguals with different amount of L1 use. These studies founded that the more L1 the bilinguals use, the more foreign accented their L2 productions are. In other words, there are more cross- linguistic influences from their L1 to L2 (Flege, Frieda & Nozawa, 1997; Flege, Yeni-

Komshian & Liu, 1999; McAllister, Flege & Piske, 2002; Piske, MacKay & Flege,

2001). Different from previous studies that focused on immigrants, Guion, Flege and

Loftin (2000) studied Quichua–Spanish bilinguals in a language contact context. They also found that there is a cross-linguistic influence from L1 to L2 on bilingual's pronunciation but not vice versa. Therefore, the literature shows that L1 is more likely to influence bilinguals' L2. Moreover, the more frequent the speakers use their L1, the more likely that this effect will manifest on their production of L2.

2.5 Factors that Influence Sound Change

Guoyu has a three-way contrast among the three voiceless sibilants. The Guoyu retroflex initials are sounds that do not exist in Taiwanese. Therefore, the mastering of retroflex initials carries certain socio-phonetic meaning. Chung (2006) stated that "the retroflex initials retain a certain cachet in marking speech as more prestigious and authoritative "(p.197). In addition, in primary education, there is a prescriptivist emphasis on mastering the contrast between Guoyu dental /s/ and retroflex /ʂ/. The mastery of this contrast or the mastery of the retroflex sibilant is often considered as an indicator of a good command of Guoyu pronunciation. Speakers who have the contrast are also considered as more educated. In other words, the mastery of this contrast carries sociolinguistic meanings. To account for potential differences among the participants

38 recruited in this study in producing this contrast, this section provides some factors that are relevant to sound changes.

Labov (1990) derived two main principles to account for sound changes. The first principle is that in stable sociolinguistic stratification, men use higher frequency of nonstandard forms than women. The second principle states that in the majority of linguistic changes, women use a higher frequency of the incoming forms than men.

Labov stated that principle one is also called change from above, which means that the change is made above consciousness. In this situation, due to linguistic insecurity, women tend to use standard linguistic forms because the standard forms are often associated with more prestigious status. On the other hand, men usually have more power in society and as a result, they are less influenced by the stigmatized forms. Therefore, they utilize non-standard forms more often than women. In contrast to principle one, principle two is change from below, which means below the level of social awareness.

Labov explained that due to the fact that women are often the caregivers in most of the societies, hence women’s speech production shapes children’s phonetic inventories. As

Labov (1990) stated, “the asymmetry of care giving situation will therefore advance female-dominated changes and retard male-dominated change” (p. 219). Moreover,

Labov also pointed out that the real time sound change is always concord with principle two which further stresses the gender differentiation in sound change.

In Labov (1972), he investigated sales people’s speech production of [r] in three department stores in New York City. The presence of [r] is an indicator of the socioeconomic status. His results show that in a more prestige department store, salesmen

39 tend to produce [r]. Since then, many studies have been conducted to investigate social variables and their effects on speech production. The literature shows that indeed women tend to use the more standardized form while men do not. In addition, younger people are more innovative and therefore may lead sound changes in the community (Fought, 1999;

Maclagan, Gordon & Lewis, 1999; Matus-Mendoza, 2004; Rau, 2000).

Dubois and Horvath (1999) investigated English-French bilinguals' production of /p t k/ by examining whether these stops are aspirated or not. Different from the studies mentioned earlier, young and old generation of the community tend to keep their Cajun

English feature but not the middle-aged group. Dunois and Horvath stated that young people do not use the standard English feature because they want to keep their local identity. Similarly, in Pope, Meyerhoff and Ladd (2007), their results also show that although some forms are not standard but in order to keep speakers' local identity and distinguish themselves with non-natives, speakers would choose to use the non-standard forms.

One study that is directly related to the target sibilants of this study is Chen (1991).

After reviewing other studies, Chen proposed that the phenomenon of merging two sounds often happened in the direction of merging the complex form into the simple form and in this case the retroflex into the dental sounds. He argues that due to the lack of retroflex sounds in the sound inventory, bilinguals in Taiwan tend to have a merged category for the retroflex and dental sibilants.

Based on the review discussed in this section, sound change is often an interaction between various social factors such as gender, education, age, socioeconomic status and

40 identity. Moreover, based on the literature provided in this chapter, language dominance or the amount of L1 use, age of acquisition and social factors are all important in explaining bilinguals' speech production. Therefore, it is necessary to take all the information into consideration when accounting for any different speech production patterns.

Chapter 3: Methodology

This chapter is divided into three main sections. They describe the research questions, the research design and the data analysis methods.

3.1 Research Questions

(1) Is Guoyu /s/ phonetically the same as Taiwanese /s/=[s]? If not, how do bilinguals of different generations treat the two sounds? Do they differentiate the two kinds of /s/ or do they assimilate one to the other, and if the latter, do they assimilate

Guoyu /s/ to Taiwanese /s/ or the other way around?

(2) Is Guoyu /ɕ/ the same as Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ]? If not, how do bilinguals of different generations differentiate or assimilate them?

(3) As in many other varieties of Mandarin spoken in areas of China outside of

Beijing, the /s/ versus /ʂ/ contrast in Guoyu is very unstable. Bilinguals of the three adult generations have different language acquisition experiences. Do bilinguals of different generations distinguish Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/?

(5) Do children make a contrast among the Guoyu sibilants? If they do, are their patterns more like young, middle-aged or elderly adults?

3.2 Research Design

3.2.1 Location

The present study was conducted in, Kaohsiung, which is the biggest city in southern Taiwan. The researcher chose Kaohsiung as the research site because compared with other cities in northern Taiwan, residents in southern Taiwan usually use more

Taiwanese. Therefore, children here are more likely to have input of Taiwanese from their family. As a result, children here are more likely to speak Taiwanese than children who live in Northern Taiwan; for example, Taipei. The children's data was collected in three kindergartens in Kaohsiung County, and the adults' data was also collected in the same area to make sure that all of the children and adults speak the same variety of

Guoyu and Taiwanese.

3.2.2 Subjects

There were a total of 124 participants across four generations recruited in this study. 60 of them were child participants and the remaining 64 were adult participants.

To study children's acquisition patterns of sibilants, children aged from 2;0 (years; months) to 6;5 were recruited in this cross-sectional study. These children are divided into 5 main age groups. They are (1) two-years old, (2) three-years old (3) four-years old,

(4) five-years old and (5) six-years old. Children within each age group were further divided into two subgroups and were labeled as a and b. In other words, each age group is the further separated with a six month interval. For example, in the three-years old group, there are 3a and 3b groups. The 3a group is those three-year-old children whose ages are between 3;0 to 3;5 and the 3b group are those three-year-old children whose ages are

43 between 3;6 and 3;11. The reason to further divide children into subgroups is that children acquire their native language very fast, and in a few months they may start to acquire different sounds. These subgroups may help us capture any acquisition progress.

Moreover, the reasons to choose children from 2 years old but not younger are because first, sibilants are generally acquired later in children's phonological acquisition. This type of sound requires children to have better control of their tongue and more practice in order to produce it. Second, it is more likely that children older than 2 years old start to go to a day care center and are able to understand and participate in the data collection task. The number of child participants in each age group is shown in Table 8.

Group/number 2 years old 3 years old 4 years old 5 years old 6 years old of children (n=5) (n=15) (n=15) (n=14) (n=11) (N=60) Female 3 6 5 7 4 Male 2 9 10 7 7 Table 8: Number of children in each age group To provide a model of the Guoyu and Taiwanese spoken in this area and to study the possible language shift among these bilingual adults, 64 adults from 20 to 80 years old were also recruited. These adult participants were divided into 3 groups which spanned 3 generations. In addition, all adults are the Benshengren group as mentioned in

Chapter 1. The oldest group (first generation) is the most Taiwanese dominant group and they are elderly speakers who are older than 70 years old. All of them are illiterate in

Guoyu and Taiwanese and never had a formal education. Taiwanese is their first language, and these elderly participants have very limited Guoyu proficiency. They know only a few Guoyu words in order to communicate with their grandchildren. Moreover, some of them may have some exposure to Japanese while they were young during the 44

Japanese colonization period. However, they do not speak Japanese anymore. Due to this potential language input of Japanese and very limited proficiency of Guoyu, they were categorized as the most Taiwanese-dominant bilinguals instead of Taiwanese monolingual speakers. The middle-aged group (second generation) has ages between 41-

65 years old. They all acquired Taiwanese first at home and then went to school at seven years old to learn Guoyu. Lastly, the young adult group (third generation) is between 20-

40 years old. The participants in this group usually have access to both Guoyu and

Taiwanese at a very young age.

From the language acquisition point of view, Guoyu has a different status for these groups of speakers. The elderly group is like the novice learners of Guoyu. The middle- aged group acquired Guoyu as a second language after they had a fully developed

Taiwanese as their first language. They went through the formal education system with

Guoyu as the only medium of instruction and became bilingual in Guoyu and Taiwanese.

Last, the young adult group had access to Guoyu much earlier than their parents. Guoyu and Taiwanese are both first languages for them, but based on different family background and language use choice, some of them are more Guoyu dominant while others are more Taiwanese dominant. The children recruited in this study can be viewed as the fourth generation. Although they might have input of Guoyu and Taiwanese from their family and the ambient environment, their parents may choose to use more Guoyu than Taiwanese when speaking to them.

The participants recruited in this study are from 4 generations which form a continuum of Guoyu-Taiwanese bilinguals residing in Taiwan now. This continuum can

45 help us understand not only children's acquisition patterns but also how the productions of the three generations of adults may differ in this language contact context. Moreover, it also can help us observe whether there is a language shift from Taiwanese to Guoyu.

Table 9 lists the number of subjects in each of the three adult groups.

Gender/Groups 20-40 yrs old 41-65 yrs old 70-80 yrs old (N=64) (n=23) (n=21) (n=20) Female 14 13 14 Male 9 8 6 Table 9:Number of subjects in each adult group 3.2.3 Materials

An audio-and picture-prompted word repetition task was used to elicit participants' productions. In this task, participants heard audio prompts and saw culturally appropriate photos simultaneously. Two word lists, one for Guoyu and the other for

Taiwanese were created for this purpose. All sibilants of both languages were elicited in word-initial position, in words that placed them in the context of a comparable set of following vowels. Two bilingual females produced the stimuli; one a young (30 years old)

Guoyu-dominant speaker and the other a middle-aged (57 years old) Taiwanese-dominant speaker. The middle-aged female is a Guoyu teacher in high school and she is extremely fluent in Guoyu. In addition, both speakers have a contrast between Guoyu dental /s/ and retroflex /ʂ/. These two speakers were recorded reading each target word 5 times and then two other native bilingual speakers chose the best 2 tokens of the productions. These two tokens were used as the audio prompts. Each word list was then randomized into two different orders. The two word lists are shown in Tables 10 and Table 11.

Traditionally, when denoting Guoyu alveopalatal [ɕ], a high front vowel [i] or semi-vowel [j] is inserted between the alveopalatal and the following vowels. For instance, the Guoyu word "shrimp" is denoted as [ɕia] or [ɕja]. However, the researcher decides to follow Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) by viewing the [i] or [j] as "the normal transition between the initial consonant and the following vowel" (p.150) and uses [ɕa] for the word "shrimp". In cases where [i] is the only vowel followed the alveopalatal, the high front vowel or semi-vowel is retained in order to have the analysis unit as consonant and vowel (CV). For instance, the Guoyu word "watermelon" is denoted as [ɕi kua]. All Guoyu words with the alveopalatal as the initial consonant follow this denoting method. Similarly, when Taiwanese /s/ is followed by [i] or [j], it is traditionally denoted as [sjɔ tsƱɪ] as in Taiwanese phrase "hot water". In order to compare across languages, this type of word is instead denoted as [ɕɔ tsƱɪ] by coding [sj] in [ɕ]. The same as the Guoyu cases where only [i] or [j] followed /s/, the high front vowel or semi-vowel is also retained to have the same analysis unit. Therefore,

Taiwanese word, "clock" is denoted as [ɕi tsɪəŋ].

Target Word English Gloss Target Sibilants Vowels IPA 三個 three pieces of /s/ /a/ [san kɤ] 三角形 triangle [san tɕiao ɕiəŋ] 森林 forest /ə/ [sən lin] 森林 forest [sən lin] 松鼠 squirrel /o/ [soŋ ʂu] 鬆餅 waffle [soŋ p ŋ] 孫悟空 monkey king /u/ [suən wu khɔŋ] 筍子 bamboo shoots [suən tsɨ] 四個 four pieces of /ɨ/ [sɨ kɤ] 絲瓜 sponge cucumber [sɨ kua] 山 mountain /ʂ/ /a/ [ʂan] 沙發 sofa [ʂa fa] 生日 birthday /ə/ [ʂəŋ ɹɨ] 聖誕節 christmas [ʂəŋ t n tɕie] 手 hand /o/ [ʂou] 手套 gloves [ʂou tao] 書 book /u/ [ʂu] 書包 book bag [ʂu pao] 石頭 stone /ɨ/ [ʂɨ thou] 獅子 lion [ʂɨ tsɨ] 西瓜 watermelon /ɕ/ /i/ [ɕi kua] 洗澡 to take a bath [ɕi tsao] 蝦子 shrimp /a/ [ɕa tsɨ] 香蕉 banana [ɕ ŋ tɕiao] 鞋子 shoes /e/ [ɕe tsɨ] 謝謝 to thank [ɕe ɕie] 熊貓 panda /o/ [ɕoŋ m o] 熊 bear [ɕoŋ] Table 10: Guoyu word list

Target Word English Gloss Target Sibilants Vowels IPA 煮麵 boil noodles /s/=[s] /a/ [s m ] 煮玉米 boil corn [sa hʊɑn mɛ] 洗衣 do laundry /ɛ/ [sɛ sɑ ] 洗臉 wash face [sɛ bin] 酸 sour /ə/ [səŋ] 鑰匙 Keys [sə si] 吸管 straw /u/ [su kɔŋ] 筍子 bamboo shoots [suən a] 西瓜 watermelon /s/=[ɕ] /i/ [ɕi kʊe] 時鐘 clock [ɕi tsɪəŋ] 熱水 hot water /s/=[ɕ] /jɔ/ [ɕɔ tsƱɪ] 熱茶 hot tea [ɕɔ te] Table 11: Taiwanese word list To obtain information on participants' language use, the researcher used a language use questionnaire first created by Baker (1992) for bilingual speakers of English and Welsh and then revised by Law and So (2006) for bilingual children of Mandarin and

Cantonese. This questionnaire is a 5 point Likert scale survey consisting of three parts.

The first part is about what language "the participant" uses when talking to different people. The second part concerns what languages "the interlocutors" use when talking to the participants. Last, the third part is about what language the participant uses in doing different daily activities such as watching TV. This 5 point Likert scale questionnaire has the following options for each question. They are (1) use Guoyu most, (2) use Guoyu more than Taiwanese, (3) use both Guoyu and Taiwanese equally, (4) use Taiwanese more than Guoyu and (5) use Taiwanese most. The complete language use questionnaire is in Appendix A. Moreover, the researcher also used a standardized vocabulary test ,the

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Guoyu version), to find out whether these participants

49 were normally developing children. Last, the children’s hearing was tested using the

AuDex, a device which sends out signals at 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 Hz through a probe placed in the outer ear and then measures the otoacoustic response from the inner ear.

3.2.4 Data collection procedures

The researcher first sent out recruitment materials to each participating kindergarten and informant to recruit both child and adult participants. After obtaining the consent to participate in the study, the researcher then gave participants the language use questionnaire. For child participants, the questionnaires were filled out by their parents. Additionally, due to the illiteracy of the oldest adult group, the researcher explained each item of the questionnaire to the elderly and filled out the questionnaire with them before recording. Most child participants were recruited from kindergartens, but most adult participants were recruited through different informants.

The researcher then set up individual meetings for data collection. Due to the time constraints of the participants and the schedule of each kindergarten, all participants finished all data collection tasks in one meeting. An audio-picture prompted word repetition task was used to elicit participants' productions. The reasons to use the word repetition task instead of a naming task are because first, children at this age may learn child-directed phrases from their caretakers or family and may also use repeated syllables in speech. In order to ensure all children produce the same words, a word repetition task was chosen. Moreover, this task has been shown to be very efficient in collecting children’s data by Edwards and Beckman (2008) and Li (2009). The picture naming task

50 may be able to elicit more natural speech from children, but one of the drawbacks is that it is hard to control the contexts for the target sibilants and may result in variability in the data. This in turn makes it hard to compare across different subjects. For example, in Hou

(2010), the researcher first planned to collect spontaneous speech but when she was not able to collect enough data or the phonemes desired, she resorted to asking children to repeat after her. To avoid using different data elicitation methods and have maximum consistency, in this study the researcher decided to use the word repetition task for both child and adult participants. The recording procedures are illustrated in the following figure.

Chatting and Taiwanese Guoyu Taiwanese Short Guoyu practice explaining recording block recording block practice trials break trials procedures 1 & 2 1 & 2

Figure 1: Recording procedures All the participants were recorded in a quiet room. The child participants were accompanied by their parents or teachers when needed. In each section, the researcher recorded Taiwanese first and then Guoyu. The reason to record Taiwanese first for all subjects instead of counterbalanced between these two languages is because most people know how to speak Guoyu since it is the language of instruction. By starting with

Taiwanese first, it helped the researcher to identify herself as a native speaker of

Taiwanese, which made the participants feel more comfortable to use this language. If the researcher starts with Guoyu, the children may only want to speak Guoyu and may not want to switch back to Taiwanese because they may feel more comfortable speaking in

Guoyu with a stranger (the researcher) in a school context. Due to this particular concern

51 for children, the researcher decided to have the same recording order for adults too, even though most of the adults were fluent in both languages.

Before doing the word repetition task in both languages, the researcher first chatted with participants in the language in which the participants were going to be recorded. Then, the researcher explained the procedures and what they needed to do in the task. To make sure that the children understood what they needed to do in the recording section, the researcher first asked the children, “when you see a ‘dog’ on the screen and hear ‘dog’, what do you say?” to make sure they understood the task. Then, there was a practice section before each language recording task in order to familiarize children with the task. The task was shown to the participants by an Asus 14 inch laptop.

For each target word in the task, participants saw culturally appropriate photos and heard audio prompts simultaneously. On the bottom of the screen, there was a UV meter to help participants monitor their volume. On the left hand side of the screen, there was a duck climbing up a ladder. When the participants produced a token, the duck climbed one stair up. This was used to help participants know their progress. Then, the subjects were asked to produce the target words after the audio prompts. If the production was not clear, the researcher asked the participants to produce the word again. Figure 2 provides a snapshot of the task. There are two language sections and within each language section, there are two randomized blocks.

Figure 2: The screenshot of the word repetition task. The target word is Guoyu "watermelon". Each word list has two randomized orders. Subjects were presented with a word list in randomly chosen order. There were two words for each CV combination per block; in total 4 tokens for each target CV combination. The researcher used a Marantz PMD 660 flash card recorder and an AKG C5900M condenser vocal microphone to record all productions. The microphone was put in front of the participants and the average distance between participants’ mouth and microphone was about 30cm. The angle was about 45 degrees and all recordings were recorded at a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz.

Between the two language recording sections, the researcher gave the participant a short break. Children were rewarded by stickers between sections and cookies after the recordings. After finishing the recordings, the research gave child participants the

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. There was also a practice trial before the real vocabulary test. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test is a perception test. There are 4 53 pictures on one page and the test administrator says a target word and then asks the participants to point to the picture (from a group of 4) that they think matches the target word. Last, the research used the otoacoustic emissions equipment to test children's hearing. All children have normal hearing and are normally developing children based on the vocabulary test.

3.3 Data Analysis Methods

The transcription analyses and acoustic analyses were both done in Praat (2011), an acoustic analysis computer software. The researcher first segmented the recordings using a Praat script. In this script, 7 tiers were inserted in a textgrid for each target word for analysis.

3.3.1 Transcription

To answer the question of bilingual children's acquisition patterns, the researcher, who is a Guoyu-Taiwanese bilingual first listened to the children's recordings and then marked 1 as correct and 0 as incorrect for the target sibilants and the following vowels.

Then, the researcher and another phonetically trained student listened to the recordings again and transcribed the incorrect tokens using a broad transcription. If the target CV was substituted by another sound from the same language, a dollar sign "$" was added before the transcription. On the other hand, if the substitution was not from the same language, then a plus sign "+" was added before the transcription. Last, in cases where the incorrect tokens were intermediate between two categories, a colon ":" was used between the two sounds. In this case, the sound located on the left side of the colon is the primary category. In other words, the intermediate sound sounded more like the one on

54 the left side of the colon. To ensure consistency, the researcher transcribed all four recordings from each subject altogether before moving to the next subject. In this way, the researcher can use the same criteria to judge each subject's production. Moreover, a second bilingual speaker of Taiwanese and Guoyu transcribed 20 percent of the whole data to ensure inter-transcriber reliability. Table 12 summarizes the transcription system.

Transcription symbols for Meaning Examples incorrect tokens $ The target sound is substituted Taiwanese example, $t by another native sound + The target sound is substituted Guoyu example, +h by a non-native sound : The target sound is Taiwanese example, $h:+f intermediate between two sounds but the close to the left side one. Table 12: Transcription symbols used for incorrect tokens To determine whether a child has acquired a sound or not, the operational definition of acquiring or mastering a sound is that a child can produce the target sound in one particular position with 75 percent accuracy (Li, Edwards & Beckman, 2009 ; Smit et al., 1990). To determine the age of acquiring a particular sound, the researcher adopted the criterion used by Hua and Dodd (2000) and So and Dodd (1995). The operational term of the age of acquiring a sound is that in one age group, 90 percent of the children have more than 75 percent accuracy of the sound. Then, the researcher would report that children at this age have acquired the sound.

3.3.2 Acoustics analysis

The researcher did acoustic analysis for all of the target sibilants to (1) identify the acoustic features of adults' productions of the target sibilants, and to (2) study when 55 children start to make a contrast, if any, among these sibilants and whether this contrast is similar to the adult's norm. To do so, two tags were aligned to acoustic events in each analyzed production. The first tag is the start of the target sibilant (fst) and the second is the onset of the following vowel (vst) in the consonant-vowel transition. The beginning of a sibilant is defined by an increase of energy both on the waveform and also the spectrum with energy over 1000Hz. On the other hand, the onset of a vowel is defined as the first uprising zero-crossing of the glottal pulse. Moreover, to ensure consistency, the dynamic range was set to 40dB and the view range was set to be 0 to 11000Hz for children and 0 to 8000Hz for adults. The two tags are shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4.

Figure 3: Screenshot of transcription and alignment

Figure 4: Screenshot of event tagging. The word is Guoyu "forest". The tags were needed in order to do spectral moment analysis for the sibilant part, and also to extract the second formant frequency (F2) of the vowel. The spectral moment analysis has been used to distinguish voiceless stops and fricatives (Nittrouer, Studdert-

Kennedy, & McGowan, 1988a ; Nittrouer, 1995). This analysis calculates the mathematical moments such as mean (M1), standard deviation (M2), skewness (M3) and

Kurtosis (M4) of the spectrum. That is, the power spectrum is viewed as an estimated probability distribution and these standard statistical moments are calculated.

A Praat script was used to do the spectral moment analysis automatically. For each target sibilant, a 20 ms Hamming window centered at the mid-point of the sibilants was selected and then a fast Fourier transform (FFT) was used to estimate the spectrum in order to plug it into the Praat formulae for calculating the 4 moments. The calculations were done without any pre-emphasis. The reason to choose the center 20 ms of the

57 sibilants is that the center part of the sibilants has the strongest and most stable energy and is less likely to be influenced by the following vowel.

The same script was also used to extract the F2 of the following vowel. A linear predictive coding (LPC) analysis with the window length set to 25 ms was used to estimate F2 frequency in a window that began 5 ms into the consonant and vowel transition. However, this part of the analysis was done semi-automatically. This is to ensure that Praat extracts the correct F2 frequency instead of the third formant (F3) frequency. Sibilant fricatives usually have energy concentration in higher frequencies.

Centroid or M1, which is the weighted mean frequency of the fricative noise spectrum, can provide information on where the energy concentration is. In addition, centroid correlates negatively with the front oral cavity before the constriction. The shorter the front resonating cavity before the constriction, the higher the centroid of a sibilant.

Therefore, Guoyu dental /s/ is expected to have the highest centroid.

The other measurement, onset of F2, was taken at the consonant-vowel boundary.

The onset of F2 is negatively correlated with the back oral cavity. The shorter the back oral cavity, the higher the F2. Therefore, Guoyu /ɕ/ is expected to have a higher F2 because its constriction is made in a posterior place of articulation when compared with

/s/. Figure 5 shows where the centroid and the onset of F2 were taken from the sibilants.

Figure 5: The measurement of onset of F2 (on the top panel) and centroid/M1 (on the bottom panel). Courtesy of Dr. Mary Beckman 3.3.3 Analysis of language use questionnaire

As previously mentioned, the language use questionnaire is a 5 point Likert scale survey containing three parts. The first two parts are more important because they are about language choices and language input. Therefore, these two parts were assigned to have 40 percent of the weight to the final score. On the other hand, the third part is not as important as the previous two parts. Therefore, it is assigned to have 20 percent of the weight to the total score. In part 1 and 2, the interlocutors who were listed in the questionnaire were further divided into core family members such as parents and siblings, extended family like grandparents and relatives, and others such as teachers or friends in order to have different weight to the score. Based on the literature, family members such as parents or caretakers have the most influence on children's language acquisition.

Therefore, immediate family such as parents and siblings were given the weight of 5 percent while the extended family had 3 percent. Last, the friends or neighbors were 59 assigned only 1 percent. Each subject has a score from the above calculation. The cut-off score is 3. Anyone has a score higher than 3 is categorized as Guoyu-dominant bilingual and those with scores lower than 3 are Taiwanese-dominant bilinguals.

Chapter 4: Acoustic Analysis of Adults Production of Sibilants

This chapter is organized as follows: (1) research questions relevant to adults' productions, (2) the results of the language use questionnaire, (3) acoustic and statistic results of adults' sibilant production.

4.1 Research Questions for Adults' Productions

The following three questions are directly related to adults' data. They are,

Guoyu /s/ to Taiwanese /s/ or the other way around?

(3) As in many other varieties of Mandarin spoken in areas of China outside of

4.2 Bilingual Adults' Results of Language Use Questionnaire

Before reporting adults' production data, it is important to know their language dominance in order to provide some background information for any future comparisons.

The three generations of adult participants were all recruited in Kaohsiung County,

Taiwan to ensure that all of them spoke the same variety of Taiwanese and Guoyu. The first generation is adults who were born between 1928 to 1941 and they are between 70 and 83 years old. As previously stated, the elderly group acquired Taiwanese as their L1 and had very low Guoyu proficiency. Taiwanese is the language they used most in their daily life. However, all of them spoke at least some Guoyu. This language background is the reason why the elderly are categorized as the most Taiwanese-dominant group instead of Taiwanese monolinguals.

Age /Gender Female Male Total 20-40 14 9 23 (3rd generation, young) 41-65 13 8 21 (2nd generation, middle-aged) 70-83 14 6 20 (1st generation, elderly) Table 13: Number of adult participants in each age group The second generation were born between 1946 to 1970 and they are between 41 and 65 years old. This group of participants acquired Taiwanese first at home because it is the language their parents speak. The middle-aged group then learned Guoyu when they went to school at around 7 years old. Therefore, Guoyu is the second language (L2) to these participants. This group is the one who experienced the Guoyu-only policy implemented by the government in 1945. Although this group of participants had to use

Guoyu in school, they spoke Taiwanese at home. The majority of participants in this 62 group received education until high school. Several of them have a college diploma.

Although this group started to learn Guoyu when they started school at 7 years old, they have high Guoyu Proficiency.

Last, the young adult group were born between 1971 to 1991 and are between 20 to

40 years old. The third generation is the one that has input from both Taiwanese and

Guoyu at a young at age because their parents are able to speak not only Taiwanese but also Guoyu. Therefore, Taiwanese and Guoyu are both L1s for them. However, whether they are more Taiwanese-dominant or Guoyu-dominant may depend on several factors such as the language their family tends to use, education background, and gender. These young adults all have an education at least to high school and many of them have a college diploma.

Table 14 reports the results from adults' language use questionnaire. This table can be used to explore whether there is a potential language shift in Taiwan, as Sandel et al.

(2006) suggested. The elderly adult group, as expected, is the most heavily Taiwanese- dominant group. Specifically, this is the only group in which all of the participants were categorized as Taiwanese dominant on the basis of the questionnaire. The middle-aged group has 18 Taiwanese dominant and 3 Guoyu-dominant participants. Last, the young adult group has 12 participants who are Taiwanese dominant and 11 participants who are

Guoyu dominant. Based on the data, we can conclude that, after 60 years of language contact, it has created a situation that allows this group to have earlier access to both languages. The young adults are not as predominantly Taiwanese dominant as the older two groups. A chi square test shows that there is a statistically difference in terms of

2 language dominance between the young and middle-aged groups χ (1, N=44) = 4.25, p=.03. With the questionnaire data, we can categorize elderly and middle-age groups as

Taiwanese-dominant groups and the young adult group as evenly split between Guoyu- dominant and Taiwanese-dominant individuals.

Age/Gender Taiwanese-dominant Guoyu-dominant Total 20-40 12 11 23 (3rd generation) (F=9, M=3) (F=5, M=6) 41-65 18 3 21 (2nd generation) (F=11, M=7) (F=2, M=1) 70-80 20 0 20 (1st generation) (F=14, M=6) Table 14: Language dominance of the adult groups 4.3 Acoustic and Statistic Results of Bilingual Adults' production

All subjects participated in two recording sections, one for Guoyu and one for

Taiwanese. Each of them had 2 Guoyu recordings and 2 Taiwanese recordings. All productions were elicited by an audio-picture prompted repetition task with all target sibilants in word-initial position. This resulted in 80 tokens for each participant. The acoustic information was extracted from the sibilant and vowel segment. More specifically, the two acoustic measures that were used in this study are centroid and onset of second formant frequency (onset F2) of the vowels. These two measures have been proved to be useful in predicting Putonghua sibilants (Li, 2008). The spectral moment analysis calculated the first mathematical moments (centroid) of the central 20ms of the sibilants. The onset F2 was measured at 5 ms after the consonant-vowel boundary. All the acoustic information was extracted by Praat. The reason to choose the central 20 ms is that it is where the sibilants have most stable energy and is less likely to be influenced by the following vowel. 64

Figures 6 and Figure 7 show scatterplots of the two acoustic measures in adults' productions of the target sibilants before comparable vowel and glide contexts. The first set of scatterplots (in Figure 6) are all females' productions and the second set of scatterplots (in Figure 7) are all males' productions. All the plots plot the centroid value as the x-axis measure and the onset of second formant (onsetF2) as the y-axis measure.

Participants' sibilant productions are separated by age groups (elderly, middle-aged and young) and by vowel contexts (front, glide, central and back vowels). Each row represents data from each of the three age groups and each column indicates data from each of the four vowel or semi-vowel contexts. Taiwanese productions were coded in red and Guoyu productions were in blue. The Taiwanese /s/ has two allophones [s] and [ɕ].

The Taiwanese /s/ is produced as [ɕ] when followed by front vowel [i] or semi- vowel/glide [j]. In order to see how bilingual produce these two allophones of Taiwanese

/s/ and compare them with Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/, the allophones of Taiwanese /s/ were separated and indicated by lower case "s" and "c", respectively. Therefore, the "c" is the combinations of Taiwanese /s/ with vowel [i] or semi-vowel [j]. In addition, they are coded in different shades of red color. Guoyu /s/, /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ are presented by capital "S", lower case "r" and capital "C" and are in different shades of blue color. Each letter in the plots represents one observation.

Traditionally, when denoting Guoyu alveopalatal /ɕ/, a high front vowel /i/ or semi- vowel [j] is inserted between the alveopalatal and the following vowels. For instance, the

Guoyu word "shrimp" is denoted as [ɕia] or [ɕja]. However, the researcher decides to follow Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) by viewing the [i] or [j] as "the normal

65 transition between the initial consonant and the following vowel" (p.150) and uses [ɕa] for the word "shrimp". In cases where [i] or [j] is the only vowel followed the alveopalatal, the high front vowel or semi-vowel is retained in order to have the analysis unit as consonant and vowel (CV). For instance, the Guoyu word "watermelon" is coded as [ɕi kua]. All Guoyu words with the alveopalatal as the initial consonant follow this denoting method. Similarly, when Taiwanese /s/ is followed by [i] or [j], it is traditionally denoted as [sjɔ tsƱɪ] as in Taiwanese phrase "hot water". In order to compare across languages, this type of word is instead denoted as [ɕɔ tsƱɪ] by coding [sj] in [ɕ]. The same as the Guoyu cases where only [i] or [j] followed /s/, the high front vowel or semi- vowel is also retained to have the same analysis unit. Therefore, Taiwanese word, "clock" is denoted as [ɕi tsɪəŋ]. Last, the legends only show in the middle-aged group's plot in order to make the plots cleaner.

As the scatterplots show, different age groups have different patterns in their two dimensional sibilant space. First, among the three generations, each generation seems to have only one category for Guoyu /s/ and Taiwanese /s/=[s]. However, each generation has a unique /s/ category. For females, the place of articulation of [s] seems to gradually move from a more alveolar place of articulation (elderly) to a denti-alveolar (middle- aged) and finally becomes a distinctly dental [s] (young females). However, for the males, only the young men start to front their [s] to a more dental place of articulation. In addition, the plots suggest that for the elderly, they used Taiwanese /s/ to produce Guoyu

/s/ and the young adults seem to Guoyu /s/ to produce Taiwanese /s/.

Front vowels Glides Central vowels Back vowels

s r r r 3000 C c Cccc C c r r s s CCCCcCc cC cc c CC c CcCcCc c cc ccc cc CCS C r 2500 cC CCc c C CcccC C c C CC c ccCcCcCCCCc s CCcCccCc cCc r C CCCCC C CCCCcsCccCccsCss c c c CCcCC cc c c c CCr CCC S r c c CCcCCCCcCccCcC ccCcCcCcCcCc c CCC CCr s r CCcCCCCcCsCcCsccCc c s C C cccCccC CCc r CSCCSCrCCr CC Cs r CCCCsscCCCcCcs s CCs s CCCCcCCCcC c r rCrrrCrCrC r s SS s 2000 CssssscCcCCCss s C cCC c r CSr s CscsCCssCsssCsCssCsCssssCss s CCCc r sCrSCsrSCrsrrsSrCrSCs S Ss sS C CCsCssCCsCsCs C C SrrSrSrSrCsSssSrrsSrCSsrrSsCSrSrssSr S Sr rSrSr SSsSsS rr CCC C C C SrCSrSrSsrrsrrsSrsrSrSrrSsSrssSssSrrSsr Ss rsr SsrSsSrsrSrrSrrssSr r C s SSrSrrSCrsSrSsrrSrsSrsrrSsSrrSsSrSrrrSsrsSrrSssss S SsrSrrSsSrSrsrSrSSSrSsss rSr rsSSrrSrSSssrsSssSrsrssSrsrsrrSsSrsrSrrsCrsSrssrSsSrssSrsrrsS r SSSsrrrSSssrsrSSrsrSrsrssSrsrSSrs s 1500 c SSrrSsSrrSsSssrrrSrsSrSrSssrsSrsrSSSssrrrs S S s Sr r r SrrsSrrrSsrSrsrSrrsrSSr sSsSsrsS rSSrSrSrSrrsssSss Srs s s s ssSrSrSSrsrsrSssrSrSsrSrSrrrsSrrs elderlyfemales s r rrSsSss s s S rSssrrrSsSrSSSSSrSrsSSSSS C rSSrssrsSrS s rS SrrSrrSrrs rr rSs Sr r r rS S rSrrrrrS S 1000 r C S Sr c 3000 Cc c T[ɕi] c c T[sjɔ]=[ɕɔ] s T[sa,sə] r s T[su] C C c S cCcCcCcCCc C s T[sɛ] cc C G[ɕjo]=[ɕo] C C S G[sa,sə,sɨ] S G[so,su] CCcCCccCcCccc c cc cc CC CCcCCccCCcCccCCc C G[ɕi,ɕe] cccc c c S r CCCCC r G[ȿa,ȿə,ȿɨ] r G[ȿo,ȿu] CCcCCCCccCcCcCc CcCcCcCcCc CCCCCr 2500 CCc CcCc r CCSC r CCcCCcCcCcCCccc CCCcCcCcccCcccccCcCcc r CrCCCCCCrCCC C G[ɕa] r CCCc s CCCccCccc r CrCCCrCCS CcCcCcsCcss sss s CCCCcCcCcCcCcCc SrSrrr SrCCrSrCSCrSCrrSrS s S r S r CcCCCCsscscs sCsssss CCCCC CC rrrrrrCrCSrSCrrSSrC C Cs Csssssss s s CC C C r rrrrrrSrSr ssCSsS SrS r r SS 2000 CsCssCsCs ss C C r r rr s srsSSSSS r r s sC CsCssCCsssss CC r rrCSrSSrrrrrrSrSsrSSsrrSrssSrsrSr SsSsSsSS rr r rSrSs S s s s ss C rSrrSSrrSrSrSrrSsSrSrSSrsrSssrSSssSsSssSsssrs r Sr rSrrrrrr s C rrrssSrrssrsSsrSsrsSrsSrrrSrrrsSsrsSssrsSsSsSrSsrsSsrssSrsrSssSss S SrSrSrSrsSrSsrSSsSsrsSS SrrrrrSsSrsSSrSrsrsSsrSssSrrsSrsrSrSsssss r rSssSSrSrSSrSrrrSsSrsSrsSsrssSsSs SsSSSs

sr SSrSSrSsrSsrSsssrrrssSrSrrsrsrSrrSsSsrrss s rrsSSrSSsSrsrsSrsSrrSrrsrSrSSsSSrsSsrssrrSss OnsetF2(Hz) 1500 rSsrSrS SrSrsS sSrSr S rSS SsSrSrSs rrrrssSsrsrSrrrrsSrSsrrSrSrsSrrrsrSrrr S S S s r SsSrrSrr rsssrsSrrrSssS rr SSSS r middle-agedfemales 1000 r

3000 C Ccc Cc c cCCCcCcC rr S CCcCcCCccCCC c c c CcCcCCcCcCCCcCc cCc cC r C CC cCcCcCCcCcCCcC Cccccc CCCC 2500 CcCcCcCcC s C c c r rCr CCCCcCCCcCCC C ccC r rrCrrCCCC r cCcCCcCc ss s sss CCccccCc rr rCrSCrCC S r cc sssssssssss ss CCCcccCccc r rSCrCCCCsC Sr r CC s ssssssssssssss s CC CCCccCCcc r SrrrSrCSrrCrCrCsr SsSrSSrrSrSSSSSS r CC ssss ssssss c Cc r rrrrrrrrrrCrSrrCrrrrSrrrSSSssSrSsssSssSsrSSsssSssSSsssrSsSs s rS 2000 CCCCCcCCC r rr rrCrrrSrCrrrrCCSrrrSrSsrsrSsSsrsSSSSSSSSrs r r S r s CCCCCC r rr rrrrrrrrSrrrSrssSSCrSsSsSsrsSSsrSsSrsSsrSsrSsSssSssSsssSsSsSSS r rrr rsSsS sS S c CCCC rr rrrrsrrSrrrsr ssrsSsrSsSssSssSsSsrsssSssSsSSS r rr r rrsrrrsSsrsSsSsSr SSsS s C CC C rr Sr srsr ssssSsrSsSssSsSrsSss rrrrrrrsSrSrrSrrSrSrrSsSSsrssSrsSSS C CCCC r rS ssrss ss r rrrrrSrSrsrrrrSSrsSSrsrrrrSssSrsSSsSSsSSsSs CC r r rrrSrrrr rSrSrSSrSsrrSssrSsssSSsSSsrSsSSss S 1500 rrrsr sSSSSrsSSs s S r rrrSrrSrrSsSsSSS youngfemales s S SSr rrSrrSSrrrSSsss SSs s r rS rs rrs SS S S r S s S 1000 S 2000 6000 10000 140002000 6000 10000 140002000 6000 10000r 140002000 6000 10000 14000 Centroid (Hz)

Figure 6: Females from three age groups' production of sibilants. In the legend box, T=Taiwanese, G=Guoyu

Front vowels Glides Central vowels Back vowels S r

3000 S r Cc c S r rr c r S s C S rrr r r CCC S S Sr S cCCcCc c C r C SS S r 2500 cCCc c c CS c CssccCCC ccC c r C S CC cc cC CCCcCcCc r C sC cCCCc c c c CsC CCCs cCc CC CCCCcc CCCC CCSC C CCsCCs C C cc C CSCCr r 2000 Csss C s s Csss CsC C Sr r S s r s s ss s C S CsSSS r sr r s s rrSsrS SSrsr r rrSrSrSSrSS rr Srs SsSrsrSsssSsrSsrsrsr srS rSrsrsSrsSs r SrS sSrS s S S s elderlymales 1500 sSsrssr SsSs s r sSS r r rSsrrsrSrrrSsrSsrSss srsrSsSr SSrSsSSSrrSr rSsSsSrs srsS sS srSr Ssrrr S r SS sSSrr SrS r C S rS S

1000 r S S c r Cc s r 3000 c c r r s s c T[ɕi] T[sjɔ]=[ɕɔ] r r T[sa,sə] s T[su] c s T[sɛ] C G[ɕjo]=[ɕo] r SS S G[sa,sə,sɨ] s S G[so,su] S r r cC C G[ɕi,ɕe] c s r r G[ȿa,ȿə,ȿɨ] s r S r G[ȿo,ȿu] c C r r ss 2500 C CC r r S r ccCcCCCCc cCccCc c rCSC C G[ɕa] S r C CCCcCccCCcCc cCcC c Cr Sr r S s s r CCsCCcCCcCcCCcC cCCCCcc Cc r r SCCrrSrC rSr ccCCcCCsCc CCcccccC C rCSr rrS ss CCCCcssCcssss CCCcCCccCc CrCs CSCS s 2000 C ssCscs CCC Ccc CSCsSrCrCSrr sCssCssCCsc CCsCrSCCSsSr r Sr srrr Sr Cs s rrSSCsrrSrr S Sss S ssCsssssCsss r r rrrrrr S sS s SsrrsrrSS rrSrrrSrSSrsSSrrSrrrSrSrssSs r rrrr rSrssr sSs

SsrSSsrSssSssrSrrsssrsrSssrsrssssrsSSS rrsrrrSrSsSrrSr SSsr OnsetF2(Hz) 1500 SSSsrSrSrsssSSrSrrSsSSSSr s SSrSrsrrSSS rs SrSSrSssSsrsSsSsrssSsrsrrsSsSsS S rSrSSrSrSrsS r s rrrrSSsSrSSsrs rsrSSrSSrSSrSSSSSSS s s rrSrS SrSs S middle-agedmales Ss rrSS

1000 S Sr r r S C 3000 Cc S Cc S C C C r r r c c S r CCC CC c rr r 2500 CCcC r r ccCCcCccc rr r c CcCcC cCc S C S CCCCc cCcCCCc c c c Cc r r r r s s CCCccccCCCCCCCc c C cccCccC C r s CCcCCcCcCCcCcC CcCCcCCc c Sr CrC S r S 2000 CC CCcCccCCcCc cc rSrrSrSrCCCCCS S sr r s CCCcss ssssss ccCccCcccc rCCrrCCrrrrSCCr SSSS r r s s CCC ssssssss C c C ccC rSrrrCCSCrCCrSrrSs S S s ss S s CC s sssss ss s CC C C rSCSCrCrrSrSrCrs ssrSSs SS r r rrSrr rs s SS s s s C C rrSrrrrCSrrrCrrrrrrSrrsrrsrrrSrSsSssrssSsSssSrssrrssSSssSSrsSssSs S s r r rrr rsrsSSss sS C C S rrrrCrS SssSrrSrsSsSrSssSs s s SSrS r r r ss SSs youngmales 1500 rC rrrSsSrSSssSSrSrssSs S r rrrrrrsrrrSSrsSrSs S C C S rrr r sSsssrrsSrsSsssssrSsSsss s SrSrSrSrrrr SrSrrsSrrrSSSS S S rSS sSsSsSs SSSSSsSrSrrSrrSSrSsSSsssSss sSSS r s r rr Sr SrrSs s S S r SS S

1000 S 2000 6000 10000 140002000 6000 10000 140002000 6000 10000 140002000 6000 10000 14000 Centroid (Hz)

Figure 7: Males from three age groups' production of sibilants. In the legend box, T=Taiwanese, G=Guoyu

Similarly, each generation seems to have only one category for the Guoyu alveopalatal /ɕ/ and the Taiwanese palatalized allophone (/s/=[ɕ]) as shown in the "Front vowel" and "Glide" columns but this /ɕ/ category has different status in relation to bilinguals'/s/. By observing the "Front vowel" column, it shows that for elderly, their

Taiwanese allophones [ɕ] and [s] and Guoyu [ɕ] all occupy similar space on the centroid dimension. The only difference is the onset of F2. The anticipation of a high front vowel

[i] makes the onset F2 higher than that of [ɛ]. The centroid measure is the measure taken within the sibilants. Therefore, the similar centroids suggest that for the elderly, these two

Taiwanese allophones have similar internal spectra structures. Thus, to the elderly, the [s] and [ɕ] are allophones of /s/. However, by looking at where the "s" ([s]) and "c" ([ɕ]) are located, it seems to suggest that the so-called allophones can also be viewed as a continuum of one single sound which differs due to the anticipation of the following vowels instead of two separated categories. Last, for the elderly, they assimilate Guoyu alveopalatal /ɕ/ to their Taiwanese palatalized allophone.

Unlike the plots of the elderly, the middle-age adults' front vowel plots seem to show a gender effect. The middle-aged males have a pattern more similar to the elderly.

However, some of the females start to front their Taiwanese [s] to a more dental place of articulation. Probably due to the acquisition of Guoyu and they started to front their [s] in order to accommodate a more complex Guoyu sibilant inventory. Therefore, some of their Taiwanese [s] and the Taiwanese palatalized allophone [ɕ] have different centroids.

This might mean that the internal spectra structure of Taiwanese [s] and [ɕ] for middle-

69 aged females began to differ. In other words, some of the middle-aged females do not treat the [s] and [ɕ] as allophones.

Last, the young adults have a distinct dental [s] which is shown by relatively higher centroid values compared with the two older groups. Because of the fronting of [s], the young adults' [s] and [ɕ] not only differ in onset F2 but also centroids. More specifically, the difference in centroid for [s] and [ɕ] means that these two sounds have different internal spectra structures. In other words, they are dissimilar sounds instead of allophones of one sound. Therefore, it suggests that the young adults assimilate

Taiwanese palatalized allophone to their Guoyu alveopalatal.

As the plots for the central and back vowel contexts show, these three generations also have different patterns in producing the Guoyu dental [s] and retroflex [ʂ]. The elderly have a merged category for Taiwanese [s], Guoyu [s] and [ʂ]. In other words, they assimilate Guoyu [ʂ] to their Taiwanese [s]. The middle-aged males are like the elderly by assimilating Guoyu [ʂ] to Taiwanese [s]. However, middle-aged females began to have some [ʂ] fall into the lower end of the centroid axis and also have some [s] fronted to the higher end of centroid axis. This suggests that some of the middle-aged females started to make a contrast between Guoyu dental /s/ and retroflex /ʂ/. Last, the young females seem to have a more robust contrast between Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/ than middle-age females as well as young males.

To answer the research questions and test the above observations, three types of linear mixed effect models are built. Due to potential gender effects, each type of model is run twice, one for females and the other for males. As a result, a total of six linear

70 mixed effect models are built. Model 1 and model 2 test whether languages and age groups have effects on participants' production of Guoyu /s/ and Taiwanese /s/ in non- palatalizing contexts. Model 3 and model 4 are similar to the first two models but the focus is on Guoyu /ɕ/ and Taiwanese /s/ in contexts where it is [ɕ]. Model 5 and model 6 are about whether there is a difference among age groups in producing Guoyu /s/ versus

/ʂ/. Since the primary differences among the age groups in Figures 6 and 7 involve the centroid dimension, the dependent variable in all six models is centroid. In all six models, age group is one of the predictor variables. It is coded as 9a, 9b and 9c for the young, middle-aged, and elderly participants, respectively. In addition, in all models, 9c (the elderly) is used as the reference group. Another predictor is language and it is code as G and T for Guoyu and Taiwanese. In all models, subjects are entered as the random effect.

Formula=lmer(centroid ~ tg * group + (1 | subj), subset(new, phone=="s" & gender=="f")) Predictors Estimate Std. Error t-value (Intercept) 6688.72 243.39 28.536 Language(T) 562.07 97.65 5.756 Group9b 600.07 337.80 1.776 Group9a 1749.19 331.51 5.276 * Language(T):group9b -54.43 140.73 -0.387 Language(T):group9a -315.08 138.15 -2.281 Table 15: Summary of females' model of [s]. * means statistically significant based on the t distribution table Table 15 summarizes the results of model 1. The data is from females' production of /s/. Here the predictors are (1) languages (Guoyu and Taiwanese) and (2) adult age groups (9c, 9b, 9a). The results are: (1) There is no language effect. That is, there is no difference between the female adults’ Guoyu /s/ and their Taiwanese /s/ in non- palatalizing contexts. (2) Middle-aged females (9b)' centroid of /s/ is 600.07 Hz higher than that of elderly females. (3) Young females' (9a) centroid of /s/ is 1749.19 Hz higher 71 than that of elderly females. In addition, the difference is statistically significant based on the t-value.

Formula=lmer(centroid ~ tg * group+(1|subj),subset(new,phone=="s"&gender=="m")) Predictors Estimate Std. Error t-value (Intercept) 5607.1 343.8 16.308 Language(T) 110.8 141.9 0.781 Group9b 846.7 438.3 1.932 Group9a 1303.2 428.8 3.039 Language(T):group9b 154.4 180.9 0.854 Language(T):group9a 742.9 177.0 4.198 Table 16: Summary of males' model of [s] Table 16 summarizes the results of model 2. The data is from males' production of

/s/. All the predictors are the same as Model 1. The results are: (1) Similar to females' model, there is no language effect on males' production of Guoyu /s/ and Taiwanese /s/ in non-palatalizing contexts. (2) Middle-aged males' centroid of /s/ is 846.7 Hz higher than that of the elderly males. (3) Young males' centroid of /s/ is 1303.2 Hz higher than that of the elderly males. However, based on the t-value, there is no statistically significant difference between elderly males and middle-aged males or elderly males and young males.

Taken model 1 and 2 and Figure 6 and 7 shown above, each adult group has only one category for their Guoyu /s/ and Taiwanese /s/ in non-palatalizing contexts. However, each adult group's "norm" for /s/ is unique. Young adults' centroids of /s/ are higher than those of the elderly, suggesting that Young adults have a more dental /s/ and the elderly participants have an alveolar /s/. In addition, the difference between young females and elderly female participants is statistically significant. On the other hand, middle-aged participants also have a slightly higher centroid value of /s/ when compared with the

72 elderly but this difference is not statistically significant. This is shown on Figure 6 and 7 that some middle-aged females started to front their /s/ to a more dental place of articulation but the majority of their /s/ tokens and those of middle-age males still have a more alveolar place of articulation.

The next two models tested whether there is any difference in adults' production of

Guoyu alveopalatal and the Taiwanese palatalized allophone.

Formula=lmer(centroid ~ tg * group + (1 | subj), subset(new, phone=="C" & gender=="f")) Predictors Estimate Std. Error t-value (Intercept) 6669.64 180.56 36.94 Language(T) 395.69 89.84 4.40 Group9b -570.49 260.22 -2.19 Group9a -702.68 255.35 -2.75 Language(T):group9b -199.99 129.47 -1.54 Language(T):group9a -382.45 127.05 -3.01 Table 17: Summary of females' model of [ɕ]

Formula=lmer(centroid ~ tg * group + (1 | subj), subset(new, phone=="C"&gender=="m")) Predictors Estimate Std. Error t-value (Intercept) 5262.18 307.47 17.114 Language(T) 51.23 106.39 0.482 Group9b 622.45 391.95 1.588 Group9a 61.97 383.48 0.162 Language(T):group9b 44.56 135.62 0.329 Language(T):group9a 27.06 132.69 0.204 Table 18: Summary of males' model of [ɕ] Model 3 and 4 (summarized in Table 17 and 18) each tests whether there is a difference in female or male participants' production of Guoyu /ɕ/ and Taiwanese /s/ in the palatalizing context. The results indicate that (1) there is no language effect in both models. Therefore, similar to the models for [s], each adult age group has only one [ɕ] category for both languages. (2) Middle-aged females' estimated centroid of [ɕ] is 570.49

Hz lower than that of the elderly females while middle-aged men' estimate centroid of [ɕ]

73 is 622.45 Hz higher than of the elderly males. (3) Young females' estimated centroid of

[ɕ] is about 702.68 Hz lower than that of the elderly females. But young males' centroid of [ɕ] is about 61.97 Hz higher than that of the elderly males. However, based on the t value, there is no statistically significant difference between the elderly and middle-age adults or between the elderly and the young adults.

Compared to the [s] and [ɕ] models (summarized in Table 15 ~ 18), the estimate values of centroid for [s] and [ɕ] for elderly females are 6688.72 Hz and 6669.64 Hz and

5607.10 Hz and 5262.18 Hz for elderly males, respectively. On the other hand, the estimate values for [s] and [ɕ] for young females are 8437.91 Hz and 5966.96 Hz and

6910.30 Hz and 5324.15 Hz for young males, respectively. These values are in accordance with the previous plots that for young adults /s/ and /ɕ/ are different sounds.

Based on centroids, /s/ has a more anterior place of articulation than that of /ɕ/. Centroid is the measure taken in the sibilant. The difference in Hertz shows that the internal spectra structure of these two sounds are different. In other words, they are different phonemes for young adults. The centroid values for /s/ and /ɕ/ for elderly participants are very similar, which suggests that these two sounds are produced with a similar place of articulation.

The next two models test whether each age group have a contrast between Guoyu

/s/ and /ʂ/. In this two model, the predictors are (1) age groups and (2) target sibilant ([s] or [ʂ]).

Formula=lmer(centroid ~ targetC * group+(1|subj),subset(new,phone!="C"&gender=="f")) Predictors Estimate Std. Error t-value (Intercept) 6688.72 198.25 33.74 targetCsr -179.48 97.97 -1.83 Group9b 600.07 285.70 2.10 Group9a 1747.07 280.39 6.23* targetCsr:group9b -702.72 141.12 -4.98* targetCsr:group9a -2335.15 138.55 -16.85* Table 19: Summary of females' model of /s/ an /ʂ/.* means statistically significant based on the t distribution table

Formula=lmer(centroid ~ targetC* group (1|subj),subset(new,phone!="C"&gender=="m")) Predictors Estimate Std. Error t-value (Intercept) 5607.07 339.44 16.519 targetCsr -16.89 140.35 -0.120 Group9b 846.68 432.70 1.957 Group9a 1303.16 423.35 3.078 targetCsr:group9b -482.31 178.91 -2.696 targetCsr:group9a -1507.04 175.05 -8.609* Table 20: Summary of males' model of /s/ and /ʂ/.* means statistically significant based on the t distribution table Table 19 summarized the /s/-/ʂ/ contrast model for females. The reference sibilant is "s" and the reference group is still the elderly group. The results show that (1) the centroid of /ʂ/ for the elderlyfemales is 179.48 Hz lower than that of their /s/. (2) Both middle-aged and young females' centroids of /s/ are higher than that of the elderly females but only young females' centroid value is statistically significant. (3) The interaction between /ʂ/ and the middle-aged females and the interaction between /ʂ/ and the young females are both statistically significant. The interaction means that middle- aged females and young females' centroids of /ʂ/ are both significantly lower than that of the elderly females. However, because young females' centroids of /s/ are also statistically higher. It suggests that young females have a contrast between Guoyu /s/ and

/ʂ/. On the other hand, Table 20 shows that (1) the elderly males' centroid of /ʂ/ is only about 16.89 Hz lower than that of their /s/. (2) Both middle-aged and young males' centroids of /s/ are higher than that of the elderly males but they are not statistically significant. (3) The interaction between young males and their centroids of /ʂ/ is statistically significant. Based on the results, it suggests that although young males have lower centroids of /ʂ/, their centroid of /s/ is not high enough to make a robust contrast between /s/ and /ʂ/.

To answer the first research question by the mixed effect models and plots, the results show that (1) for these bilinguals, there is no differences between Guoyu /s/ and

Taiwanese /s/ because these bilinguals only have one category for /s/. However, each generation has different norms of /s/. The elderly participants have an alveolar /s/. The middle-aged males also have an alveolar /s/ but the middle-aged females have a denti- alveolar /s/. On the other hand, the young adults have a dental /s/. In other words, the elderly and middle-aged males have a Taiwanese alveolar /s/ but the young adults have a

Guoyu dental /s/. Last, the elderly and the middle-aged males' production show substratum interference/transfer while some of the middle-aged females' production seems to show borrowing effect.

The second research question is whether there is any difference between Guoyu alveopalatal and Taiwanese palatalized allophone. The results indicated that (1) there is no language effect between these two sounds because these bilinguals only have one category for [ɕ]. (2) Although, bilinguals have only one category for [ɕ] but each generation's [ɕ] has different relations with their [s]. The elderly who are in some sense

Taiwanese monolinguals only have Taiwanese /s/. This /s/, according to Chung (1996) has two allophones. Therefore, as shown in the plots, the elderly assimilated Guoyu alveopalatal to their Taiwanese palatalized allophone. In addition, based on the centroids, the elderly participants' [s] and [ɕ] are indeed very similar. In contrast, the young adults who have a Guoyu dental /s/ makes their [ɕ] differ from [s] both on centroids and onset of

F2. Therefore, the young adults differ from the elderly by treating [s] and [ɕ] as two separate sounds instead of allophones of one single sound.

Last, the third question is about whether these bilinguals have a contrast between

Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/. Based on the models, it suggests that only young females have a contrast between Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/. Young males have a lower centroid of /ʂ/ but they do not have higher centroids of /s/ in order to have a robust contrast. The elderly and middle- aged males all have a merged category of /s/ and /ʂ/. This again may suggest substratum interference/transfer. As a result, they do not contrast between these two sounds.

Summary of adults' data:

1. Based on the language use questionnaire, the elderly and middle-aged groups

are predominantly Taiwanese-dominant. Half of the young adults are

Taiwanese-dominant while the other half are Guoyu-dominant.

2. For the similar sounds [s] and [ɕ] in Taiwanese and Guoyu, adults have one

category for Taiwanese /s/=[s] and Guoyu [s] and one category for Taiwanese

/s/=[ɕ] and Guoyu [ɕ]. However, each generation has its unique norm for the

categories.

3. Young female group is the only group that has a statistically significant contrast

between Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/.

Chapter 5: Results of Children's Data

This chapter is organized as (1) research questions for children' data, (2) the results of the language use questionnaire (3) children's transcription data, (4) acoustic results of children's productions of sibilants and (5) children's production pattern over "time".

5.1 Research Questions for Children's Data

(1) What are these bilingual children's acquisition patterns of the sibilants? Which sound is acquired earlier and which sound is acquired later? Are there any patterns that are similar to monolingual children's patterns?

(2) Do children make a contrast among the Guoyu sibilants? If they do, are their patterns more like young, middle-aged or elderly adults?

5.2 Bilingual Children's Results of Language Use Questionnaire

Table 21 shows the results from children's language use questionnaire.

Age group/ Taiwanese dominant Guoyu dominant language dominance 2 yrs old N=3 N=2 (F=2, M=1) 3 yrs old N=2 N=13 (F=0, M=2) 4 yrs old N=1 N=14 (F=1, M=0) 5 yrs old N=3 N=11 (F=1, M=2) 6 yrs old N=1 N=10 (F=0 ,M=1) Table 21: Language dominance of the child groups

As shown in the table, there are only 10 children out of the total 60 children who are Taiwanese dominant based on the questionnaire filled out by their parents. In Chapter

4, the results from adults' questionnaire show that the elderly and middle-aged groups are predominantly Taiwanese-dominant. However, in the young adult group, half of them are

Taiwanese-dominant and the other half of them are Guoyu-dominant. The child participants, on the other hand, are predominantly Guoyu-dominant. The data from the language use questionnaire confirms with the observation of Sandel et al. (2006) that there seems to be an ongoing language shift from Taiwanese to Guoyu.

5.3 Children's Transcription Data

There are a total 60 child participants in the study. Each child had 2 Guoyu recordings and 2 Taiwanese recordings. Among the recordings, each participant produced

4 tokens for the same target consonant and vowel combination in each language. Each child produced 80 tokens (56 Guoyu tokens and 24 Taiwanese tokens). One native bilingual speaker of Guoyu and Taiwanese first transcribed each token as 1 (correct) or 0

(incorrect). For the incorrect tokens, the other phonetically trained person transcribed what the errors/substitutions were. Last, to ensure inter-transcriber reliability, another

Guoyu-Taiwanese bilingual speaker transcribed 20 percent of the whole data. The inter- transcriber reliability was 88 percent for phonemic transcription. The following sections are organized as the accuracy rate of each sibilant, the substitution patterns for the target sibilants, and the acoustic analysis of the children’s productions.

5.3.1 Acquisition patterns

Before going to the acquisition patterns of these children, Table 22 shows their age information in months. The number in the brackets is the standard deviation of age.

N=60 2 yrs old 3yrs old 4 yrs old 5 yrs old 6 yrs old Number of N=5 N=15 N=15 N=14 N=11 children Mean age 30.4(3.4) 41.2(3.6) 51.2(2.5) 67.9(3.5) 76(3.9) (month) Table 22: The mean age of each child group The first research question is about the acquisition patterns of the sibilants and more specifically which sibilant is acquired first. To determine the age of acquisition of a particular sibilant from this cross-sectional study, this study follows the criteria used by previous studies (Hua & Dodd , 2000; Li, 2008; Li et al., 2009; Smit, 1990; So & Dodd,

1995) . The operational term of mastery of a consonant and mastery of a contrast is that a child produces a consonant in one position with 75 percent accuracy. Similarly, mastery of a contrast means that a child can produce each consonant at the same position with 75 percent accuracy (Li, 2008; Li et al., 2009; Smit et al., 1990). To determine the age of acquisition, 90 percent of children in one age group need to have at least 75 percent accuracy of a particular sibilant in order to mean that children in this age group acquired a particular sibilant (Hua & Dodd, 2000; So & Dodd, 1995). For instance, if 90 percent of children in the four years old group have 75 percent accuracy for Guoyu /s/, then the researcher would report that at 4 years old, these bilingual children acquired Guoyu /s/.

Taiwanese /s/ has two allophones, [s] in non-palatalizing contexts and [ɕ] in palatalizing contexts. In order to compare whether these is any difference in acquiring these two

Taiwanese allophones, the accuracy of these two allophones were calculated and reported separately.

Table 23 summarizes the number of children who have 75 percent or more accuracy for each sibilant. The first two rows are for the two Taiwanese allophones and the next three rows show the results for the Guoyu three sibilants. The bottom four rows are the number of children who acquired the contrast among the Taiwanese allophones and three Guoyu sibilants. The number in parentheses indicates the percentage of children in that age group with 75 percent accuracy.

Language, 2 yrs old 3yrs old 4 yrs old 5 yrs old 6 yrs old sibilants (N=5) (N=15) (N=15) (N=14) (N=11) /Age groups T /s/=[s] n=0 n=10 n=13 n=13 n=11 (67%) (87%) (93%) (100%) T /s/=[ɕ] n=0 n=12 n=14 n=14 n=11 (80%) (93%) (100%) (100%) G /s/ n=0 n=12 n=14 n=13 n=10 (80%) (93%) (93%) (91%) G /ɕ/ n=1 n=11 n=14 n=14 n=10 (20%) (73%) (93%) (100%) (91%) G /ʂ/ n=0 n=0 n=0 n=2 n=4 (14%) (36%) T [s]-[ɕ] n=0 n=10 n=13 n=13 n=11 (67%) (87%) (93%) (100%) G /s/-/ʂ/ n=0 n=0 n=0 n=2 n=4 (14%) (27%) G /ʂ/-/ɕ/ n=0 n=0 n=0 n=2 n=4 (14%) (36%) G /s/-/ɕ/ n=0 n=10 n=14 n=13 n=9 (0 %) (67%) (93%) (93%) (82%) Table 23: Number and percentage of children have at least 75 percent or more accuracy in each age group. T means Taiwanese and G means Guoyu Based on the above table, first, in terms of number of children having more than 75 percent accuracy, Taiwanese /s/=[s] and Guoyu /s/ have similar numbers of children in

82 each age group who mastered these sounds. A chi square test also shows that there is no difference in terms of number of children who mastered the Taiwanese /s/=[s] and Guoyu

/s/ (χ2(3, 60) = 1.07, p = .97). Adopting the 90 percentage criterion as the age of acquiring a sound, children at 4 years old acquired the Guoyu /s/ but it is not until 5 years old that children acquired Taiwanese /s/=[s]. However, although 93 percent of children in the 4 years old group have 75 percent or more accuracy of Guoyu /s/, the percentage never reaches 100 percent for the older group as it is for Taiwanese /s/=[s]. According to the transcription data, children at 5 years old start to learn the Guoyu retroflex /ʂ/.

Interestingly, after they had some correct tokens of /ʂ/, some 5 year-old started to substitute Guoyu /s/, or in some cases Taiwanese /s/ with Guoyu /ʂ/. This cross-linguistic influence may be the reason why older children never reached 100 percent correct of their

Guoyu /s/.

Second, similar to Guoyu /s/, Guoyu /ɕ/ is also acquired at 4 years old by the criteria adopted in this study but there are fluctuations in terms of the percentage of children having more than 75 percent accuracy at older ages. A Chi square test (χ2(4, 60)

= 1.07, p = .90) also shows that there is no difference in term of the number of children who mastered Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/. Based on the criteria we used, these bilingual children acquired Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/ both at 4 years old. Moreover, the Taiwanese palatalized allophone (/s/=[ɕ]) is also acquired at 4 years old, which is earlier than the other allophone (/s/=[s]).

The earlier acquisition of Guoyu /s/ is slightly different from the results from monolingual Putonghua acquiring children (Li, 2008; Hua & Dodd, 2000). In their

83 studies, Putonghua /ɕ/ is acquired first and then followed by /s/. One possible explanation of the earlier acquisition of /s/ might be that Taiwanese also has an /s/ and based on the phoneme frequency hypothesis Li (2008) proposed, it is highly possible that these bilingual children have more input of /s/ from Taiwanese combined with Guoyu /s/. This double input may be one of the reasons why these bilingual children acquired Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/ at a similar age.

Last, Guoyu /ʂ/ is the last acquired sibilant based on the number of children who have 75 percent of accuracy. In the two, three and four- years old groups, none of children have an accuracy rate over 75 percent. There are only 2 out of the 14 children

(14 %) in the 5 years old group and 4 out of the 11 children (36%) in the six years old group who have mastered this sound. Due to the late acquisition of /ʂ/, there are only a few children in the older age groups that acquired the contrast between /s/ and /ʂ/ and the contrast between /ʂ/ and /ɕ/. However, a much higher number of children have acquired the contrast between /s/ and /ɕ/. The late acquisition of /ʂ/ is also observed in other

Putonghua acquiring monolingual or bilingual children. The late acquisition may result from articulatory constraint. However, due to the language contact situation of Taiwan, articulatory constraint may not be the only reason to account for it. Although, only one child's parent participated in the study, these children's parents are in the age range of the young adult group of this study. From Chapter 4, we see that although young adults show a relatively clear three way contrast of the Guoyu sibilant, there still is some overlap between their productions of Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/ in the two dimensional sibilant space.

Thus, the potentially "incorrect" input may be another reason for the late acquisition of

/ʂ/.

To sum up, based on the criteria used in this study, the acquisition order of the

Guoyu and Taiwanese sibilants are, first, Guoyu /s/, Guoyu /ɕ/ and Taiwanese palatalized allophone [ɕ] followed by Taiwanese /s/=[s] and the latest one is Guoyu /ʂ/ (as shown in

Figure 8).

Figure 8: Children's acquisition order of Guoyu and Taiwanese sibilants

Figure 9 shows the box plot of the sibilants and the proportion correct of each age group. This is another way to visualize the information in Table 23. The only difference is that in this figure, each age group is further divided into two subgroups, for example 3a and 3b. Children in the 3a group are younger than 3;5(year; month). Those in 3b are older than 3;5. The target sibilants are presented on the top of the figure.

Figure 9: Proportion correct of all sibilants separated by age groups From this figure, it is clear that as young as 3 years old, children started to have a high accuracy rate for both Taiwanese /s/, Guoyu /s/ and Guoyu /ɕ/. At 4 years old (4b group), these children have one hundred percent accuracy for Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/. Different from /s/ and /ɕ/, the retroflex /ʂ/ has a very low proportion correct rate even for the oldest age group. The highest proportion correct is only about 60 percent, which is achieved by the 6 years old group.

One interesting finding is the relation between /ʂ/ and /s/ for the 5 and 6 year old groups. In the 5 years old group, children started to acquire retroflex /ʂ/ and sometimes used it for /s/, which is the opposite substitution pattern when compared with the younger children. When the 6 years old group (6a) use more /ʂ/, their accuracy of /s/ started to decrease. Moreover, the accuracy rate of Guoyu /ʂ/ and Guoyu /s/ and Taiwanese /s/=[s] for 4 and 5 year olds also shows an interesting pattern. The 4 years old group (4b) has high accuracy rate for both Taiwanese /s/=[s] and Guoyu /s/ but the accuracy rate of these two sounds decreased for the 5 years old group. The 5 years old group (5a) is the group 86 who start to acquire Guoyu /ʂ/. When they start to acquire Guoyu /ʂ/, their accuracy rate of /ʂ/ starts to increase. However, their accuracy percentage of Guoyu /s/ starts to decrease when compared with the 4 year old. Furthermore, the decrease not only happens for the Guoyu /s/ but also the Taiwanese /s/=[s] as well. In other words, the acquisition of

Guoyu /ʂ/ affect their production of Taiwanese /s/=[s] and Guoyu /s/. This finding may be an indirect piece of evidence showing that bilinguals might store two languages in one common space because when the accuracy of Guoyu /s/ decreases, their accuracy of

Taiwanese /s/=[s] also decreases.

This phenomenon is shown by their substitution errors. When some of the 5 years old children learned Guoyu retroflex /ʂ/, they started to use it for Guoyu /s/. More interestingly, this substitution error also appears in Taiwanese /s/. In other words, these children also use Guoyu /ʂ/ for their Taiwanese /s/. The substitution of /ʂ/ for /s/ could be hypercorrection which indicates that children are learning this new sound of Guoyu and overuse this sound. However, the oldest group (6b), which is expected to have higher proportion correct for retroflex, instead, has lower accuracy rate than the 5 years old.

This 6b group used /s/ more for /ʂ/ and as a result, their accuracy of /ʂ/ has dramatically dropped when compared with the 6a group.

5.3.2 Substitution errors

The following tables summarize the substitution patterns for the target sibilants.

The errors for the two Taiwanese allophones are presented separately. The errors for

Taiwanese /s/=[s] are in Table 24 and the errors for Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ] are in Table 25.

The substitutions for Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/ and /ʂ/ are in Table 26, 27 and 28 respectively.

The first column is the main error types. They are manner errors and place errors. Manner errors include stopping and affrication and place errors include fronting and backing.

There are also errors that are categorized as "others", including overshoot and borderline errors. The third column is the specific substitutions. The fourth column shows the total number of instances of each substitution and the last column breaks down the total number of instances by showing the age of children who made the substitutions. For instance, in Table 24 the affrication row, /s/-[tsh], the total number of instance is 3. In the last column of the same row, it shows "1(3y)/2(4y)". This means that children in the 3 years old group made this error once and children in the 4 year old group made the error twice.

Taiwanese /s/=[s] Error pattern Error type Instances Age of the children who produced the errors Manner Stopping [s]→ [t] 28 7(2y)/20(3y) /1(4y) error [s]→ [th] 9 6(2y)/2(3y)/1(4y) Affrication [s]→ [ts] 71 19(2y)/30(3y)/12(4y)/8(5y)/2(6y) [s]→ [tsh] 3 1(3y)/2(4y) [s]→ [tɕh] 1 1(3y) [s]→ [tsr] 1 1(3y) Nasalization [s]→ [n] 1 1(2y) Place error Backing [s]→ [h] 6 4(2y)/1(3y)/1(6y) [s]→ [ɕ] 2 1(2y)/1(3y) [s]→ [sr] 3 1(3y)/2(5y) Borderline [s]→ [sr:s] 1 1(5y) [s]→ [θ:s] 1 1(3y) Others overshoot [s]→ [st] 8 3(3y)/1(5y)/4(6y) [s]→ [sts] 18 4(3y)/10(5y)/4(6y) [s]→ [tst] 3 1(3y)/2(4y) Table 24: Substitutions for Taiwanese /s/=[s]

Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ] Error pattern Error type Instances Age of the children Manner Stopping [ɕ]→ [p] 1 1(2y) error [ɕ]→ [t] 2 2(3y) [ɕ]→ [th] 1 1(3y) [ɕ]→ [kh] 1 1(2y) Affrication [ɕ]→ [ts] 5 3(3y)/1(4y)/1(6y) [ɕ]→ [tɕ] 39 9(2y)/17(3y)/4(4y)/7(5y)/2(6y) [ɕ]→ [tɕh] 1 1(5y) Place error Fronting [ɕ]→ [s] 12 3(3y)/5(5y)/4(6y) Backing [ɕ]→ [h] 7 4(2y)/2(3y)/1(4y) Others overshoot [ɕ]→ [ɕtɕ] 1 1(3y) [ɕ]→ [hn] 1 1(3y) Table 25: Substitutions for Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ]

Guoyu /s/ Error pattern Error type Instances Age of the children Manner Stopping /s/ → [t] 26 6(2y)/19(3y)/1(4y) error /s/ → [th] 8 4(2y)/4(3y) /s/ → [p] 1 1(3y) /s/ → [k] 1 1(3y) Affrication /s/ → [tɕ] 7 6(2y)/1(3y) /s/ → [ts] 64 25(2y)/26(3y)/11(4y)/1(5y)/1(6y) /s/ → [tsh] 1 1(3y) Place error Fronting /s/ → [θ] 1 1(3y) /s/ → [ɕ] 10 7(3y)/2(4y)/1(6y) Backing /s/ → [sr] 42 5(3y)/3(4y)/21(5y)/13(6y) /s/ → [h] 11 10(2y)/1(3y) Others Borderline /s/ → [sr:s] 1 1(6y) /s/ → [θ:s] 4 4(3y) Overshoot /s/ → [ssr] 2 2(6y) /s/ → [st] 14 5(3y)/6(5y)/3(6y) /s/ →[st:sts] 2 2(3y) /s/ → [sts] 19 5(3y)/9(5y)/5(6y) /s/ → [hn] 6 1(2y)/4(yr)/1(5y) /s/ → [ps] 1 1(3y) /s/ → [sh] 1 1(6y) Table 26: Substitutions for Guoyu /s/

Guoyu /ɕ/ Error pattern Error type Instances Age of the children Manner Stopping /ɕ/→ [t] 5 5(3y) error /ɕ/→ [th] 3 3(3y) Affrication /ɕ/→ [tɕ] 67 25(2y)/29(3y)/6(4y)/2(5y)/5(6y) /ɕ/→ [tɕh] 5 1(2y)/2(3y)/2(4y) /ɕ/→ [ts] 4 4(3y) Nasalization /ɕ/→ [n] 1 1(3y) Place error Fronting /ɕ/→ [s] 20 1(2y)/6(3y)/2(4y)/5(5y)/6(6y) Backing /ɕ/→ [sr] 2 1(3y)/1(5y) /ɕ/→ [h] 9 4(2y)/1(3y)/1(4y)/1(5y)/2(6y) Others Borderline /ɕ/→ [s:ɕ] 2 1(3y)/1(4y) Overshoot /ɕ/→ [ɕtɕ] 5 5(3y) /ɕ/→ [st] 4 1(3y)/3(6y) Others /ɕ/→ [h~] 1 1(3y) /ɕ/→ [hn] 1 1(3y) Table 27: Substitutions for Guoyu /ɕ/

Guoyu /ʂ/ Error pattern Error type Instances Age of the children Manner Stopping /ʂ/→ [p] 2 2(3y) error /ʂ/→ [t] 27 4(2y)/23(3y) /ʂ/→ [th] 3 2(2y)/1(3y) Affrication /ʂ/→ [ts] 70 34(2y)/22(3y)/12(4y)/1(5y)/1(6y) /ʂ/→ [tɕ] 9 6(2y)/2(3y)/1(6y) /ʂ/→ [tsr] 3 1(2y)/2(3y) Place Fronting /ʂ/→ [θ] 1 1(3y) error /ʂ/→ [f] 4 2(2y)/2(3y) /ʂ/→ [s] 663 6(2y)/181(3y)/222(4y)/140(5y)/114(6y) /ʂ/→ [ɕ] 6 4(3y)/1(4y)/1(6y) Backing /ʂ/→ [h] 6 3(2y)/2(3y)/1(4y) Others /ʂ/→ [s: θ] 6 4(3y)/2(4y) Borderline /ʂ/→ [θ:s] 6 6(3y) /ʂ/→ [s:sr] 3 1(4y)/1(5y)/1(6y) /ʂ/→ [sr:s] 3 1(3y)/1(5y)/1(6y) /ʂ/→ [ts:f] 1 1(2y) /ʂ/→ [ts:t] 1 1(3y) Overshoot /ʂ/→ [ɕtɕ] 1 1(3y) /ʂ/→ [srt] 1 1(6y) /ʂ/→ [st] 15 9(3y)/1(4y)/1(5y)/4(6y) /ʂ/→ [sts] 13 5(3y)/5(5y)/3(6y) /ʂ/→ [tst] 1 1(3y) /ʂ/→ [tsts] 2 1(2y)/1(5y) Others /ʂ/→ [hn] 4 1(4y)/2(5y)/1(6y) /ʂ/→ [pf] 1 1(3y) /ʂ/→ [sh] 3 1(3y)/1(4y)/1(6y) /ʂ/→ [sl] 1 1(3y) /ʂ/→ [srh] 2 2(5y) /ʂ/→ [srl] 2 2(3y) /ʂ/→ [srs] 1 1(5y) Table 28: Substitutions for Guoyu /ʂ/ The following five figures summarize the above information in Table 24-28 by calculating the percentage of each type of error. These figures can help visualize whether it is manner or place errors that children tend to produce.

Substitutions for Taiwanese /s/=[s]

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

Proportion ofProportion errors

0.2 0.0 $h $n $t $th $ts $tsh +C +sr +sr:s +st +sts +T:s +tCh +tsr +tst

Types of errors

Figure 10: Percentage of errors for Taiwanese /s/=[s] Figure 10 presents substitution patterns for Taiwanese /s/=[s]."$" means the substitution is a sound from the same target language and "+" represents the substitution is a sound not from the same target language. The symbols used for the figure are worldBet, another sound denotation system which is similar to IPA. The data was extracted from Praat and when doing the transcription, the researcher used worldBet in

Praat instead of IPA.

For Taiwanese /s/=[s], the errors with highest percentage are affrication ($ts) and stopping such as ($t and $th). One place error, backing error ($h), has a relatively higher percentage compared with other place errors. Some of the other place errors include mostly backing errors such as substituting /s/ with /ɕ/(+C) and/ʂ/($sr). The occurrence of

/ɕ/ may relate to the allophony of /s/ which is palatalized as [ɕ] before high front vowel

/i/ in Taiwanese. Some children may not acquire the rule and use [ɕ] in other vowel contexts. The substitution of [s] by [ʂ] ($sr) is from the older age groups who start to

92 acquire Guoyu /ʂ/. They mistakenly used it not only for Guoyu /s/ but also Taiwanese /s/.

This in return can mean indirect evidence that for these bilingual children both Taiwanese

/s/=[s] and Guoyu /s/ belong to one category. Therefore, when they hypercorrect Guoyu

/ʂ/ for Guoyu /s/, they also use it for Taiwanese /s/=[s]. There are a few errors such as

(+st, +sts) and they are the overshoot error that is described in Figure 11. These types of errors are the cases where a child first produced a [s] followed by a silence as shown in the figure 17 and then the children produced a stop or an affricate. This error may result from children moving their tongue too high so that it blocks or partially blocks the airflow. So the second part of the production became a stop or affricate. This is probably because children are not able to sustain their tongue in the same position while pushing the air out to produce sibilants. In addition, this type of error occurs both in Guoyu and

Taiwanese. The reason to use a "+" sign here is because both Guoyu and Taiwan do not allow consonant clusters. Therefore, it is a type of error that is not allowed in the structure of their native languages.

Figure 11: An example of overshoot error. The target word is Guoyu word "squirrel".

Substitutions for Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ]

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

Proportion ofProportion errors

0.2 0.0 $h $kh $p $t $th $ts +CtC +hn +tC +tCh s

Types of errors

Figure 12: Percentage of errors for Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ] Figure 12 shows the errors for Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ]. The errors include manner errors, affrication (+tC, $ts) and stopping ($t, $th, $p) and place errors such as backing (+h) and fronting ($s). The affrication error such as ($ts) and place error such as ($s) may be

94 because children are not fully acquired the rule for the palatalized allophone. Therefore, they use [s] in the palatalizing contexts.

Substitutions for Guoyu /s/

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

Proportion ofProportion errors

0.2 0.0 $C $k $p $sr $sr:s $t $tC $th $ts $tsh +h +hn +ps +sh +ssr +st +sts +T +T:s

Types of errors

Figure 13: Percentage of errors for Guoyu /s/ Figure 13 shows the error patterns for Guoyu /s/. The manner errors that have higher percentage are affrication ($ts) and stopping ($t). On the other hand, the place errors that have higher percentage are backing ($sr) ,[ɕ] ($C) and (+h). There are also some overshoot error such as (+st) and (+sts). The manner errors such as affrication and stopping are similar with those for Taiwanese /s/=[s]. However, for Guoyu /s/, there are substitutions of /s/ by [ʂ]=($sr) and [ɕ]=($C). The ($sr) happened mostly for older children who started to acquire the Guoyu retroflex sibilant and confused them with

Guoyu /s/. The more interesting error is the place error[ɕ]($C). This type of error may come from the allophone of Taiwanese /s/ as [ɕ]. As some indirect evidence showed in the above section, it could be that children know that Taiwanese /s/ has an allophone [ɕ],

95 but they have not fully acquired the rule of palatalization and then they use it for Guoyu

/s/.

Substitutions for Guoyu /ɕ/

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

Proportion ofProportion errors

0.2 0.0 $n $s $s:C $sr $t $tC $tCh $th $ts +CtC +h +h~ +hn +st

Types of errors

Figure 14: Percentage of errors for Guoyu /ɕ/ Figure 14 shows the substitution patterns for Guoyu /ɕ/. The error with the highest percentage is the manner error, affrication ($tC). The second highest error is the place error, fronting ($s) and the third highest error is backing (+h). The substitution of [ɕ] by

[s]($s) is similar to that in Taiwanese /s/=[ɕ] context. Children may be influenced by the allophone rule in Taiwanese and as a result, they use [s] to substitute for [ɕ].

Substitutions for Guoyu /ȿ/

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

Proportion ofProportion errors

0.2 0.0 $C $f $p $s $s:sr $tC $ts $ts:$t +CtC +hn +sh +srh +srs +st +T +tst

Types of errors

Figure 15: Percentage of errors for Guoyu /ʂ/ Figure 15 shows the substitution patterns for Guoyu retroflex /ʂ/. Unlike the errors for the previous four sounds, there are a wide variety of substitutions for Guoyu /ʂ/. The one with the highest percentage is the place error, fronting ($s), followed by manner errors such as affrication ($ts) and stopping ($t). The place error is as high as almost 80 percent.

This is probably because children have not acquired the retroflex /ʂ/ and they tend to use

/s/ to substitute /ʂ/. In addition, there are many different types of overshoot errors. Most of them are the combinations of stop [t], affricate [ts] or [s].

Observing the children's error patterns, it revealed that it is the manner errors that occur most for these target sibilants. Based on previous literature, stops are usually acquired first. Therefore, it is not surprising to see stops at the same place of articulation are used for sibilants which are usually acquired later. However, based on the error patterns, it seems to suggest that affricates may not be acquired later than fricatives

97 because the target sibilants are often substituted by affricates of the same place of articulation.

5.4 Acoustic Results of Children' production

In Chapter 4, the plots show that centroid and onset F2 are two of the acoustic measures that are used by adults to differentiate their sibilants. Therefore, these two acoustic measures are also used to describe children' production. Centroid is correlated negatively with the length of the front cavity. The shorter the front cavity before the constriction, the higher the centroid. On the other hand, the onset of F2 right at the consonant vowel boundary is negatively correlated with the back cavity after the constriction. The shorter the back cavity, the higher the onset of F2. Li (2008) shows that centroid can successfully separate /s/ from /ʂ/ and onset F2 can help differentiate /ɕ/ from

/s/ and /ʂ/. In the following plots, the children's data are presented by centroid on the x axis and onset F2 on the y axis. The data is separated by age and gender. The first set of plots are girls' production (in Figure 16 and 17) and the second set are boy's production

(in Figure 18 and 19). Each row represents data from each age group (3, 4, 5 and 6 years old) and each column represents each vowel or glide context. Taiwanese productions were coded in red and Guoyu productions were in blue. The Taiwanese /s/ has two allophones [s] and [ɕ]. The Taiwanese /s/ is produced as [ɕ] when followed by front vowel [i] or semi-vowel/glide [j]. In order to see how bilingual produce these two allophones of Taiwanese /s/ and compare them with Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/, the allophones of

Taiwanese /s/ were separated and indicated by lower case "s" and "c", respectively.

Therefore, the "c" is the combinations of Taiwanese /s/ with vowel [i] or semi-vowel [j].

In addition, they are coded in different shades of red color. Guoyu /s/,/ʂ/ and /ɕ/ are presented by capital "S", lower case "r" and capital "C". and are in different shades of blue color. Each letter in the plots represents one token.

Front vowels Glides Central vowels Back vowels 4000

C C Cc C C C C Cc CCCCc C c C C C C cCCCC C c c CC CCC c Cc c CCC 3000 C C c C C c S C c cCCC c Cc c C s C C C s ss C c C CC r rs S CCc s CcCcc rr rC rSr rrsSs r S r CC c Css Cs s s C C r r rs SSrSS s S Sr s Cc c c C r S s r rSr sSrCrS rrS s Sr srS SS s Cs s rS C s Ssrss sSSs r Ss s S rS S c c s c C rS sr rSrrSSssrs SSSr SSr S r r r r S r Cc c c C C r C s r sss Srs SS r s rr S Sr r C s CC SSS SsSs SsrSs S rS r S SrSS rS S 2000 c r S S c Ss S r sr s S Sr S Sr s r r Srr C C s C SS r s S s sSr s Sr rSr rrr S r C r s r S r S r S r S s r c S r r S SS ss 3yrs old girls C C r C Cs rr r r r r SSr sS s c C Cs S r s S S SS S S C sS r r rr rS s ss C C C s rs S S r r S s c S rr r 1000 s r r s C s S s c s C r S

s r S 500

4000 c T[ɕi] c T[sjɔ]=[ɕɔ] s T[sa,sə] s T[su] s OnsetF2(Hz) T[sɛ] C G[ɕjo]=[ɕo] S G[sa,sə,sɨ] S G[so,su] C c c C G[ɕi,ɕe] c C r G[ȿa,ȿə,ȿɨ] r G[ȿo,ȿu] C c c C S C c C C C G[ɕa] C CC C Cc C c c c 3000 C c C c C c C C c s c c C c C C c c c Cc C r CrrS SC ss C Cc s ss C C C C S r r cCC CCs s s s sS r SssS rrSr Sr r r C c s s SCrsr S Srrrsr r r rs S Sr rr C C c C r SCr r sSsSs SSrs srSs rrr S SSs s S S SS C C Cc c C rs rS rS r r S Sr s S s s C C SS SSr SS r S S S SS r s C C r r S r S S r r r SS s s sSSr r 2000 r S r C C C s s S S s r sS S r r sr sS r c Ssr SrS S r S rs S rS sr c s S ss r S S r r r S rr r S 4yrs old girls Cc s s s S s s C S s S r r S S S r s r 1000 C s r r S r

S s 500 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 Centroid (Hz)

Figure 16: Bilingual 3and 4 years old girls' sibilant productions

100

Front vowels Glides Central vowels Back vowels 4000

c C c cC CcC C c c CCCCC C CC C C CC Cc C c C 3000 CC c C C CCcCcC c Cc s c c c c C C C C c C CCC s r C C C cC CCC c C cCccCc c c r C C CCC C C Cs C sss CCC cc C c r r rr rCCSC S r S css Cc s s s cCCC CC Sr rrr rr S CCr Ss rS SSS rS r c c sc s s C cc C C r r rrr r rSr r S SSrSs sr r SS S S rrr s s C cs s CCc C rr r rrrsr r r s sS rSrsr S sSSsSrsSS S s r S r C Cc C r r S Sssssr sSssssSSSSSsSrs S S r r rSS r s C s Cc c ss Css cc C r rr SCSs SSr Sr rsSsrSrsrrrrSssS sSsS s r rS r s r r Sr sss rS S 2000 c C Cc s CC r rsC r SssSsS srs r S sr S S Ssr sS r S rSrr rr S CC c Cc s c C rS Ss rs SSSr Sr S S S r sr SSSr r S r Srrsr SSrs S r r s C C s C c ssrsS r r S Sr S r s S Ssssr sS r C C r S S r SS r S rr 5yrsold girls C sS r Sr s S rS s r s C C c s SsS s s Sr SS rS s r sSSS s sS C rS s S S S Sr s c C r r C r rS SS r r r s S S S S

1000 S r 500

4000 c T[ɕi] c T[sjɔ]=[ɕɔ] s T[sa,sə] s T[su] s OnsetF2(Hz) T[sɛ] C G[ɕjo]=[ɕo] S G[sa,sə,sɨ] S G[so,su] C G[ɕi,ɕe] r G[ȿa,ȿə,ȿɨ] r G[ȿo,ȿu] cC C C C G[ɕa] C C 3000 C c C c c C C cccc CcC CC c C cCC CCC C C C Cc c c C sCCCC c s C c c rC r Cc ss s s C c cC rr r s r r s S cs sC s ccCC ccC r S r CrCr rSSrr S S SS SS r c C s s C C rrrrr r r CrSrCSss SSrsSSSr rS s rS Ss C C C r rrr C rr S SSSrSSs rS s S Ss s S s SS sS 2000 r S s r s Sr SSrsrsrs Ss ss SsS S S r r s s Sr S s s C C CS s s SSr ss s rr Sr S S SrSr C C r s r rr r r S Srr SrrsSrrsr s s s S r S 6yrs old girls Cc C S s r rSS Ss S S S s rSsSss s C Sr s s S S r r S S C s C C s S Ss r r r C s C C r r S S r c C S s s r

1000 c s 500 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 Centroid (Hz)

Figure 17: Bilingual 5 and 6 years old girls' sibilant productions

101

Front vowels Glides Central vowels Back vowels 4000

c CC c C C C CC Cc CC cc C Cc C cCC c CCC C C 3000 C C CC cC C r C r s C C CscCC cCc Cc C c C S c C cC sc s C c cc c CSC CcC CC cCs s ss c cc cc cCC C S s C CsSS s c c s CCs s ss s C cCcccCCc Sr r srr r S C c C s ss s CC C r Ssr rr SrSsS s rSs r s CCc s C s s C c S rs sCr rSrrSsss Ss s r SSSr S r S C c cC C Cc C r SC rSSrSrSSS SSSrssSssr rr s S r Ss r s Ccc s c C C C C S rS sSr rSr rrSssS r rss r r r r rSs c CccC s C C r r Crrs rrsr SrSSrrr Sss Srrsrs S S rSs S sr r sr sr rs 2000 c r C SSSS rr r s s Ss s r s S r r C C c sSr Cr r ssSS Sr sSr ss r Ss SSsrS rSsSsS S Sr c C c C c C C s C SSs SrS s SSSs S r s S s rS rrS rSrssSSs sS SSr r S s Cs S S S S r Sr Srrr S s S S S 3yrs old boys s S s r rS rr s r r r S C S rr r S SS SS s r S r S SS r S S r r S C s rS S S

c ss S

1000 500

4000 c T[ɕi] c T[sjɔ]=[ɕɔ] s T[sa,sə] s T[su] s OnsetF2(Hz) T[sɛ] C G[ɕjo]=[ɕo] S G[sa,sə,sɨ] S G[so,su] C C c C G[ɕi,ɕe] r G[ȿa,ȿə,ȿɨ] r G[ȿo,ȿu] CCC cc c CcCCC CC C C C G[ɕa] C CCcCcCCCCCC c c CCC 3000 C CCC C c C Cc cCCCCc cCcCsc c c c CCCCC C C CCCCCC c C s C c c C CCC C C Ss C C cC CscCcc cc CC Cc Cc C C C C r r r Cs cs ssCs C s s s C c cCc c r CCrS Sr r rSrrS S c C cC s s s s s c CCc CCccCc s r C CsSrs Sr CS r Ssr r r r s c c sCCC ss s s s CCCcCc c CC CSSCCCS SrrSr r SsSrSSS rr r Sr rS c Cc Cs cs s C CCcC CC S sS rCsr Srs rSsSrSrrrsrSrrrsSrsrrSrsSSSss srS s sS r S S r r sC C ss s C C CcC c C r r r rSsSsSsssS SSsrsSsrsSs SrsSSSr Ss sS S s Sr Sr s S S S r rs s s s C Ccc Cr r CSsr SsrSrSSsssrrSrsSrrrrSSssrrSSssr s r r S SSrss sr rrSrS Ss r r S 2000 cC rSr rrs r Ssr r s S S r S sr sr rr rSr s s c s c Cc sr Ssr SsrSS rr SrrssSsrS sS S S s Ss rS srs sSSr SsSS C cCc rS ss S Ssr Ss SrSr sr sSS r s rs rS ssrrrS Sr S rssSs r sr r C c s s s C Ss s S r S s s r rrsSS r r SrrrrrsrSr Srr r c c c rS r r srS s sr rSssSrr r rr rrSr SSrSs SS s s 4yrs old boys C cC c S rS S sS S SS rS r r s C s C S r s rrsSr r rSSrsS s s ccc r r SS r S r S S r S r S S r S r S r r

1000 s c c C r S C S S C C 500 c 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 Centroid (Hz) Figure 18: Bilingual 3 and 4 years old boys' sibilant productions

102

Front vowels Glides Central vowels Back vowels 4000

c C c C CC C C c CC C 3000 Cc c C CC C C c C C c cc c C C C C c CCC c s s cCC c c C C CC C CCC ccC s C s s CCc Cc cCC SC C Cr r C CCcc ss s s Ccc Cc cC r r r C rrr SS C C Cc s s s s s CCCc S C s Ss CSSSrr S S CCC CC s s s s C CCcc c S r r rC Ssr SrSrS sss r SSs S S s c CCC cC s C C r rr r r r Cs sSSsSr rssSsrrSssS SSr s SS S s cCcCCc c C C c r rrr r r S Sr SSSsSrSssS SsS S r S sSs c CCc Cc s s C C r r rr r rC CrS S sSsSrsrSrsrSrrssSSSrSss rr r s s r Ssr r rS r 2000 C r S s s s SsSS S c c Cc Cc C rCr s rsCrr sS Ssr rS s SS S Srr rSSs rS Srr rr c Cc r r r s s SSrsSS sr r s S r S Sr sSS rs rsSrr rsSrr sSrSr S s C s c C s sS ss r s S SS ss rr rsSr S C r r r S S ss Sr s 5yrsold boys C C s s c r r Srs S s r Sr r Srs Ss r Ss s c r rS SS S S r r C S s rSSS r Sr S r rS r C C s c rsS S S C C S S srS S s r r 1000 r S r r

Ss 500

4000 c T[ɕi] c T[sjɔ]=[ɕɔ] s T[sa,sə] s T[su] s OnsetF2(Hz) T[sɛ] C G[ɕjo]=[ɕo] S G[sa,sə,sɨ] S G[so,su] c C C C G[ɕi,ɕe] r G[ȿa,ȿə,ȿɨ] r G[ȿo,ȿu] C c CC Ccc C c c c C C G[ɕa] CC Cc c c C C C 3000 c c C C C c CCC C C C c c C C C CCCC Cc C cc C C C Cc C c s c c c r C C s C sC sC s cCCcC C c c C C C C C CCc C CCCc c c r SS cCc c Cc sc s s C C C c r r r S S sr rSr r c C s s s sc cCCCC C C r rrrrr rr rSr s r s SCsSr Ss r r S ccc C C s c r r CSr r r C SC rSSsSrsSrsS S r r S S r s rr S s s cC C s C s s CC CC rSr S rSrCr rSr rS sSsrSrSrs SrSSsSs S rr s rS s Sss 2000 c c r C S SSS rssS SsSSss ss r s S r sCC c C s c s C S S rrSS r rSsrrrssSrrsr s sSrSrSS r r r rSr s sr r Sss C C s c rs srsSsSSSSrSsSr ssSrssSr s sr SSrsr Sr S SSsSss sSsSr S CcC C r Cr Srs ssSCSs s s S s s S S S S rrrSrSr c s C S ss r S Srrr S S r r r rSsr r r r 6yrs old boys C sc c C ss S Sr S r rrrSSrSsrr rr SSS r S sS s S s S r Sr Sr rs S s SrSSr r C r r S s SSSS r S r s S r s c r s S S s S r r S s S 1000 S r

C s S 500 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 14000 Centroid (Hz)

Figure 19: Bilingual 5 and 6 years old boys' sibilant productions

103

By observing Figures 16 to 19, it suggests that children only have one category for

Taiwanese /s/=[s] and Guoyu /s/. Their Taiwanese [s] occupy similar space with their

Guoyu [s] as shown in the plots for central and back vowel contexts. In one of the palatalizing contexts (front vowel context) which shows how children treat the two

Taiwanese allophones, 3 years old children have an undifferentiated category for [s] and

[ɕ] by having a similar centroids and onset F2 values for both sounds. 4 years old children seem to front their [s] to a more dental place of articulation. Moreover, 5 and 6 years old children show slightly more separation between their [s] and [ɕ] on the centroid dimension. However, most of [s] still have similar onset F2 values as their [ɕ]. In other words, in palatalizing context, children seem to make a constriction for [s] in a more anterior place of articulation than that of [ɕ] but they may use similar tongue posture as

[ɕ] when producing [s] as shown by the higher onset F2 values. This result suggests that these children may treat [s] and [ɕ] as separate sounds. Therefore, they may assimilate

Taiwanese palatalized allophone to their Guoyu alveopalatal.

In non-palatalizing context (the central vowel context), 3 years old children produced their Guoyu [ɕ] and [s] with similar centroid values but most these two sounds are separated by onset F2. 4 years old children started to have most of their [s] with higher centroids, indicating the fronting of [s] to separate it with [ɕ]. For the 5 and 6 years old children, their [s] were further fronted to a more dental place of articulation. This makes the majority of their [ɕ] have lower centroid values than that of their [s].

Last, looking at children's production of Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/ in central and back vowel contexts, 3 and 4 years old children have most of their [ʂ] occupy a similar space as their

104

[s]. This result is also reflected by the transcriptions that children often substituted [ʂ] by

[s]. In the central vowel context, 5 years old children started to have some Guoyu [ʂ] produced with lower centroids in order to distinguish it with [s]. The lowering of centroids for [ʂ] makes their [s] have the highest centroids and [ɕ] with intermediate centroid values. This arrangement of centroids for the three Guoyu sibilants is very similar to young adults. However, the 6 years old children do not seem to have a more robust contrast between Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/ than the 5 years old children. In addition, 6 years girls seem to have more [ʂ] produced with a posterior place of articulation to contrast [s] than 6 years old boys. This potential gender difference is also observed in children's production in Li (2008). In her study, the 4 years old girls show a gender effect in producing Putonghua [ɕ] with a more dental place of articulation to make it more like

[s]. This pronunciation is shown in young Putonghua speaking females' production to make their pronunciation more feminine. Similarly, 6 years old girls might try to have a contrast between [s] and [ʂ] just like the young females while boys of the same age decided to sound more like young males by not having a robust contrast between these two sounds. Compared to central and back vowel plots, it seems that the contrast between

[s] and [ʂ] were neutralized in back vowel contexts. This neutralization may result from the lip-rounding feature of the back rounded vowels that lowers the centroid values of /s/ or that back vowels may be acquired later by children. Therefore, the contrast is not as clear as that in central vowel contexts.

To answer the research question on whether children make a contrast among Guoyu sibilants, the results show that older children do make a contrast among Guoyu sibilants.

105

Moreover, their patterns are more like young adults in that they have a dental /s/ and

Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/ are different phones for them instead of allophones of one phoneme.

5.5 Children's production patterns over “time”

To see how children's productions might change over "time" in this cross-sectional study, the researcher plots mean values for the two acoustic measures (centroid and onsetF2) child-by-child against the child’s age. That is, Figure 20 shows the two acoustic measures by age, as in an “apparent time” study in sociolinguistics. On the centroid vs. age plot, it shows that Guoyu /s/ and /ʂ/ start at around 9000Hz on the centroid axis, but children in older age groups start to differentiate /s/ from /ʂ/ by lowering the centroid of

Guoyu /ʂ/. The lowering of centroid indicates a posterior place of articulation to contrast with the higher centroid values of [s], indicating a more anterior place of articulation.

However, it is not until 80 months old (6 years and 6 months old) that the 95 percent confidence intervals of the two sibilants are not overlapping with each other. On the same plot, Guoyu /ɕ/ starts around 7000 Hz and progresses with similar values for children in older age groups. Eventually, due to the lowering of centroid values of the Guoyu retroflex, Guoyu alveopalatal has similar values as the retroflex. On the other hand, the onset F2 plot shows that right from the beginning, children produced Guoyu /ɕ/ with higher F2 compared with /s/ and /ʂ/. However, there is no difference in terms of onset F2 for /s/ and /ʂ/. These plots revealed that these children are like the young adult group in using centroid to distinguish the place contrast of Guoyu /s/ with retroflex /ʂ/, and onset

F2 to differentiate the alveopalatal /ɕ/ from /s/ and /ʂ/.

106

Figure 20: Mean centroid and onsetF2 of all Guoyu tokens for each child plotted against their age Summary of children' data:

1. Based on the language use questionnaire, these bilingual children are

predominantly Guoyu-dominant.

2. The acquisition order of the sibilants are (1) Guoyu /s/, /ɕ/ and Taiwanese [ɕ] at

4 year old (2) Taiwanese [s] at five years old and (3) Guoyu /ʂ/.

3. The substitutions children used for the sibilants are mainly manner errors such

as stops and affricates. However, the substitution for Guoyu /ʂ/ are

predominantly a place error [s].

4. Children at five year old group started to have a contrast among the three

Guoyu sibilants like the young adults. However, even children at the six years

old group do not have a contrast like young adults.

107

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Taiwan is a highly bilingual and unstable language contact context. The four generations of bilinguals have different language acquisition orders as well as language dominance. This study aims to investigate, in this language contact context, how bilingual adults and children's L1, L2 interact with each other and how the interactions manifest on bilinguals' production of sibilants. The researcher hopes to provide more insight to the long-lasting debate about whether bilinguals store two languages in a common space or two separate spaces. Four generations of bilinguals were recruited in the study. The first generation (the elderly) are the most Taiwanese-dominant speakers with very low proficiency of Guoyu. The second generation (the middle-aged adults) acquired Taiwanese as L1 and Guoyu as L2 and are predominantly Taiwanese-dominant.

The third generation (the young adults) is evenly split into Taiwanese-dominant and

Guoyu-dominant. In addition, unlike the older two generations, young adults acquired both Guoyu and Taiwanese as L1s. Last, the fourth generation (children) like young adults also have early exposure to Guoyu and Taiwanese but based on the language used questionnaires, they are predominantly Guoyu-dominant.

The results from Chapter 4 show that the three adult generations make different types of contrasts for the Guoyu sibilants. For the first and second generations of speakers who are both Taiwanese-dominant, they have two main clusters for the 3 Guoyu sibilants. In other words, they only have a two-way contrast for the 3 sibilants of Guoyu. 108

They assimilate Guoyu /ʂ/ to their Taiwanese /s/ and use their Taiwanese palatalized allophone of /s/ for Guoyu /ɕ/. As a result, onset F2 is the measure that differentiates the two sibilant clusters. However, middle-aged females began to show some signs of fronting their [s] to a more dental place of articulation.

The third generation, especially the young females, have a three-way contrast of the

Guoyu sibilants. They divide the centroid dimension by having their [s] with higher centroids (more anterior place of articulation), their /ʂ/ with lower centroids (more posterior place of articulation) and /ɕ/ with intermediate values of centroids. They further distinguish Guoyu /ʂ/ and /s/ with /ɕ/ by onsetF2. In other words, they make a contrast based on place of articulation and tongue posture.

When producing Guoyu alveopalatal /ɕ/, whether the adults acquired the Guoyu dental /s/ plays a role in how they produce /ɕ/. The elderly and middle-aged adults do not have a Guoyu dental /s/. In other words, they do not have a fronted /s/ to contrast with other sibilants. In high front vowel context, their [s] and [ɕ] have similar centroid values.

Centroids which were measured in the sibilants show the internal spectra structure of the sibilants. With the two older generations having their [s] and [ɕ] occupy the same space, it means that these two sounds are very similar or the same for them. The only difference is the onset F2 which was measured in the consonant vowel transition. This difference is due to the anticipation of different vowels. Based on this, it suggests that the elderly and middle-aged adults assimilate Guoyu /ɕ/ to their Taiwanese palatalized /s/. However, the young adults who have Guoyu dental /s/ instead of Taiwanese alveolar /s/ show a different pattern. Their [s] and [ɕ] do not have similar centroids, indicating that based on

109 the spectra structure, these two sounds do not have similar or same physical properties to them. Thus, for the young adults, they assimilate Taiwanese palatalized /s/ to their Guoyu

/ɕ/.

As expected, the elderly used the most similar sounds from their L1 to produce the

L2 sounds, for instance the assimilation of [ʂ] to [s] and Taiwanese palatalized allophone of /s/ for Guoyu alveopalatal /ɕ/. The middle-aged adults, even though they started to learn Guoyu at 7 years old, still use their L1 to produce the L2 sounds. However, the middle-aged females started to show some signs of fronting their /s/ in order to accommodate a more complex Guoyu sibilant inventory. This suggests that learning a second language as early as 7 years old may not be early enough for them to have finer grained categories even though they are fluent in their L2. Amount of L1 use or language dominance may interact with age of acquisition as Flege (2007) suggested and influence bilinguals' production. Moreover, middle-aged females' results also confirm with Labov's

(1991) principles that when there is a sound change, females are usually the ones who lead it. This is shown by fronting of /s/ as well as the lower centroids for Guoyu [ʂ] in middle-aged females' plots. Furthermore, because they are usually the caretakers of children (which is the young adult generation), therefore, their production also shapes children's phonetic learning. Besides the fact that young adults do have earlier exposure to both languages, female caretakers' language input could also be one more reason why young adults have a three-way contrast of Guoyu. However, due to the unstable language contact context, although the young adults have more distinctive three categories for the

110 three Guoyu sibilants, there is still some overlapping on the boundaries of young adults'

[s] and [ʂ] categories .

The bilingual children in the study have ages from 2 to 6 years old. Different from the monolingual children, these bilingual children acquired both Guoyu /s/ and /ɕ/ at age

4 based on the criteria used in the study. This may be due to more input of Taiwanese

/s/=[s] that facilitates the acquisition of Guoyu /s/. Similarly to monolingual children, the retroflex /ʂ/ is also the latest sound that is acquired by the bilingual children. The early acquisition of /ɕ/ suggests that back consonants may not be necessarily acquired later than front consonants as Locke (1983) stated. Furthermore, the substitution patterns show that these children have mainly manner errors such as stops and affricates for the sibilants. The substitution of sibilants by affricates indicates that affricates may not be acquired after fricatives. One interesting piece of evidence about children's substitution patterns is that when children started to acquire /ʂ/, they used it to substitute not only

Guoyu /s/ but also Taiwanese /s/=[s]. As a result, not only the accuracy rate of Guoyu /s/ but also that of Taiwanese /s/=[s] is decreased. This may be an indirect piece of evidence that bilinguals do store their two languages in a common space.

Based on the children's sibilant production plots, they reveal that it is not until 5 years old that children started to show more adult like contrast among the sibilants.

Moreover, their contrast patterns are more like young adults. This finding shows that in order to fully acquire sibilants, children do need more time to acquire this class of sound.

In Figure 20 on page 104, which plots how children's production progress in different age groups, it shows that bilingual children started with undifferentiated gestures for their /s/

111 and /ʂ/ by having very high centroid values. Their centroids of /ʂ/ are even slightly higher than that of /s/ in the beginning. However, children in older age groups have their centroid of /ʂ/ decreased in order to differentiate it from /s/. The decreased value of /ʂ/ later became very close to that of Guoyu /ɕ/. This pattern is in accordance with how young adults divide their centroid dimension on Figure 6 and 7.

The researcher collected speech samples from four generations of bilinguals reside in Taiwan. Based on their language use questionnaires and sibilant production patterns, it seems to suggest that there might be an ongoing language shift from Taiwanese to

Guoyu. However, it is important to keep in mind that Taiwan is a relatively unstable language contact context compared with Spanish and Catalan in Catalonia. Spanish and

Catalan has been co-existed in Catalonia for hundreds of years but Guoyu and Taiwanese only in contact for about sixty years. In addition, according to Bosch, Costa and

Sebastian-Galles (2000), there are language policies to ensure these two languages are both official languages and are used in all levels of society in Catalonia. Children by 12 years old need to have four language skills in both languages. However, there are no such language policies to ensure Guoyu and Taiwanese have equal status. Therefore, Taiwan is still a more dynamic context. Whether there will be a complete language shift to Guoyu may depend on many different factors and this needs future research to further investigate this issue.

Looking at middle-age adults' production, it suggests age of acquisition alone cannot fully explain the results shown in this study. Gender, language dominance are both very important factors. Last, bilingual children's acquisition patterns reveal some

112 language universal patterns such as the earlier acquisition of stops as well as some language specific patterns when compared with monolingual Putonghua acquiring children. For instance, the early acquisition of /s/ and /ɕ/.

This study collected data from four generations of bilinguals in Taiwan. The findings of this study seem to suggest that bilinguals may store their two languages in one common space. These findings can contribute to our understanding of bilingualism.

Moreover, the nature of this context also contributes to our understanding of how different political or social factors may influence people's attitude toward languages and then affect the direction of language shift.

113

Appendix

Language background scale

Created by Backer (1992) and modified by Law and So (2006) for bilinguals of

Cantonese and Mandarin. I revised Law and So (2006) for bilinguals of Mandarin and

Taiwanese.

Instruction: The questions are about the language in which your child talk to difference people, and the language in which certain people speak to your child. Please answer as honestly as possible. There is no right or wrong answer. Please tick in the correct box, and put a cross if a question does not fit your child’ position.

指示, 以下問題關於小朋友在日常生活中所用的語言分配情況. 問題沒有”對”

或錯”, 請如實填寫. 請在適合的方格填上 “√”, 如有不適用的問題,請填上 “x”.

Part A: In which language(s) does your child speak to the following people?

甲部: 小朋友用什麼語言跟以下人士對話?

Always in More often in Equally use More often in Always in Mandarin Mandarin two Taiwanese Taiwanese 最常用國語用國語比台 languages 用台語比國最常用台語語多平均地用兩語多種語言 Father 父親 Mother 母親 Brother/sister 兄弟姊妹 Grandparents 祖父母

114

Other relatives 其他親戚 Neighbors 鄰居 Teachers 老師 Friends in the classroom 校內朋友 Friends outside school 校外朋友 Community 社區人士

Part B: In which language(s) do the following people speak to your child?

乙部. 以下人適用什麼語言跟小朋友說話?

115

Friends outside school 校外朋友 Community 社區人士

Part C: which languages does your child use in the following activities?

丙部. 小朋友進行以下活動時會用什麼語言?

Always in More often in Equally use More often in Always in Mandarin Mandarin two Taiwanese Taiwanese 最常用國語用國語比台 languages 用台語比國最常用台語語多平均地用兩語多種語言 Watching TV 看電視 Listening to CDs 聽音樂 Listening to Radio 聽收音機 shopping 購物 Phoning 打電話 Clubs 興趣小組

116

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