三至四歲兒童對國語輔音的聽辨與發音

Three to Four-years Old Children’s Perception and Production of Mandarin Consonants

本研究的目的是要探討說國語的幼童對輔音的聽辨與發音能力。二十位三至四歲說國語的兒童接受測試。測試範圍是十六個發音難易不同的音節首輔音。首先他們要看圖命名，之後他們要對一些新詞作發音摹擬，最後再進行辨音選圖的工作。兩個發音工作的結果，大致與文獻中所載的發音順序相同：/p, p’, k’, m, n, x/ 是掌握得最好的。而在聽辨方面，最困難的不是發音中最差的 /ts, ts’, s, ß/ 而是 /f, x, ts, tß/。從各語音在「看圖發音－－新詞聽辨」和「新詞發音－－新詞聽辨」的相對位置來看，我們所得的結果顯示兒童的聽辨與發音是同步漸進式的發展，而其中發音又略為領先。

This study examines Chinese children’s perception and production of syllable initial consonants. We tested if children’s speech sound perception developed ahead of their production. Twenty 3-to-4-year-old children were tested on their production and perception of 16 syllable initial consonants. They first named pictures of familiar objects and then they were asked to imitate new names of novel cartoon figures. After the brief learning process, they were asked to match cartoon figures with pre-recorded voices. Data obtained from the naming task and the imitation task indicated that among the tested initial segments, /p, p’, k’, m, n, x/ were mastered by these children while /ts’, ß/ were the most difficult ones. Results from the perception task showed that sounds that were properly produced were also correctly perceived. The only exception was the /f-x/ pair, of which perception was found to be more difficult than production. In sum, our findings suggested that children’s capacity to discriminate phonemic minimal pairs develop in near-synchronization with their ability in producing such sounds, with a slight advantage on the production side.