| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 語言學研究所 === 104 === The aim of this study is to discuss the issue concerning syllable deletion of the young children acquiring Taiwan Mandarin. The two main aspects are including in the following: syllable acquisition and syllable deletion pattern. The frequency of overall syllable types, the patterns of syllable deletion, and the syllable relationship between children and caretakers were examined. The findings can be explained by markedness theory proposed by Jakobson (1968) and frequency effects.
The four children, aged between 0;10 to 2;6, and the four caretakers are investigated in this study. The spontaneous speech between the child and the mother every other week was recorded and analyzed. A longitudinal observation study is conducted by the researcher and the research team.
Based on the analyses, the young children show a general syllable tendency; that is, the unmarked syllable type, CV, has the highest frequency in the analyses of overall syllable types and syllable deletion types respectively. The more unmarked syllable types occur more frequently in the children’s early production. Since the young children’s phonological systems are unstable and immature, they tend to produce the reduced syllable forms, especially the deletion of the postnuclear glide [w] and the deletion of the final nasal. The possible reason may due to the fact that the children use coda-dropping as a simplification strategy in their production. Furthermore, according to statistical findings, the syllable types of the four child-caretaker pairs are positively correlated. Young children’s phonological productions may be influenced by the overall productivity and the phonetic content of the ambient language.
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