Search

Aim: In this study, we examine the production of Cantonese tones by preschool Urdu–Cantonese children living in Hong Kong. Methodology: 21 first language Urdu second language Cantonese children (ages 4–6) and 20 age-matched first language Cantonese children participated in a picture-naming experiment with 86 words (109 syllables in total). Data and Analysis: Acoustic analysis was carried out for perceptually correct and incorrect tone productions of each tone. Comparisons were also made across speaker groups regarding accuracy rates and error patterns. Findings: Overall, first-language Urdu participants had lower accuracy and greater tone confusion than first language Cantonese participants. The pattern is attributable to influence from Urdu prosody, ongoing Cantonese tone mergers, and general sensitivity to phonetic information. Originality: This is the first empirical study on the acquisition of Cantonese tones by children who are heritage speakers of a non-tone language. Significance: This study extends the literature of early bilingual phonology by furthering our understanding of an under-studied bilingual population, that is, heritage children of a non-tone language acquiring a tone language as the majority language. The findings of this study also produce implications for the practice of language educators and speech therapy professionals working with bilingual children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese script is non-alphabetic and a Chinese graph is basically syllabic which may consist of phonetic and semantic radicals with no representation of phonemes. The logographeme, a unit smaller than a radical, has been suggested to be the basic unit of Chinese writing based on data collected on people with aphasia. To better understand the role of logographemes in Chinese writing development, a data corpus of logographemes based on characters appearing in primary school textbooks is established. Logographemes are analysed in terms of features that are believed to influence writing development. A total of 249 logographemes were identified: 151 logographemes with no meaning and sound (NMS), 84 logographemes with both sound and meaning which could also stand alone to serve as a character (SA) and 14 logographemes with meaning only (MO). At each grade, the frequencies of NMS logographemes were relatively lower than those of SA and MO logographemes, and the frequencies of SA and MO logographemes were similar; 94% of logographemes were present in the characters taught to grade one students. Students learnt all the pronounceable logographemes by grade three, while they finished all the logographemes without sound until grade six. Characters with left-right, top-bottom and enclosing configurations constituted about 94% of all single-unit characters acquired in primary school years. Statistics derived from the data corpus regarding these features across grades enable us to make specific predictions about stages of literacy development and suggestions for investigation into processes involved in character production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]