| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 語言所 === 97 === This is an longitudinal study of the acquisition of voicing in a child acquiring Taiwan Southern Min. Taiwan Southern Min has a three-way contrast in voicing in initial labial and velar stops, i.e., voiceless aspirated (/ph/, /kh/), voiceless unaspirated (/p/, /k/) and voiced (/b/, /g/). The corpus speech data of a child aged (1;2-1;5), (1;9-1;10) and (2;2-2;3) and speech data of the child’s caretaker were analyzed. In order to describe the degree of voicing objectively, the study uses acoustic measurement to obtain the voice onset time (VOT), instead of doing impressionist transcription. The VOT value of each stop token was obtained by measuring the interval between the release of the stop closure and the beginning of vocal fold vibrations in a waveform, using Praat (Boersma and Weenink, 2008). Regarding voiced-voiceless contrast, it was found that as early as at age 1;5 (Period I), the child was able to make a significant voiced-voiceless difference in labials. Later at age 1;10 (Period II), the child made a significant difference in both places of articulation, though the VOT values was still not adult-like. As for aspiration contrast, it was not made until age 2;3 (Period III). By 2;3, the child was able to make a systematic voiced-voiceless contrast as well as aspiration contrast in both places of articulation. It seems that the child had acquired the three-way contrast voicing mechanism in TSM. However, the statistical analysis on the last period comparing the child with the adult showed that, although the child’s mean VOT values for the voiceless unaspirated and aspirated stops resemble the adult’s mean VOT values, the voiced stops produced by the child were still not adult-like. During the acquisition of voicing, there was found an effect of place of articulation in voiced stops: the labial /b/ was produced with a lower VOT than the velar /g/. This place effect suggests that during acquisition of voicing in voiced stops, the child acquired the labial earlier than the velar.
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