A Challenge to Whole-word Phonology? A Study of Japanese and Mandarin

ABSTRACT

Phonological models of early word learning often assume that child forms can be understood as structural mappings from their adult targets. In contrast, the whole-word phonology model suggests that on beginning word production children represent adult targets as holistic units, reflecting not the exact sound sequence but only the most perceptually salient elements or those that align with their own vocal patterns. Here we ask whether the predictions of the whole-word model are supported by data from children learning Japanese or Mandarin, both languages with phonotactic structures differing from any so far investigated from this perspective. The Japanese child word forms are found to include some characteristics suggestive of whole-word representation, but in Mandarin we find little or no such evidence. Instead, some children are found to make idiosyncratic use of whole syllables, substituting them for target syllables that they match in neither onset nor rime. This result, which neither model anticipates, forces reconsideration of a key tenet of the whole-word model – that early word production is based on word-size holistic representations; instead, at least in some languages, the syllable may serve as the basic representational unit for child learners.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The Italian children are named with initials (in lieu of pseudonyms).

² Priestly (1977) lists the child’s 17 “bisyllabic ordinary forms” (such as whale [wɛjəl]) that were in use before the novel “experimental” forms began to be noted, as well as all 70 “bisyllabic experimental forms” (in alphabetic order) that he observed over four months. Vihman (2019, with thanks to Florence Oxley) provides a chronologically ordered list, which better reveals the dynamics of the child’s production over time.

³ Note that differences in voicing are disregarded here, as control of voice onset time is not generally mastered at this age (based primarily on studies of English and Spanish: Macken, 1980). In fact, we see child forms varying here between voiced and voiceless stop for the same target word in both the Japanese and the Mandarin data.

⁴ We disregard tone differences in identifying reduplicated Mandarin forms as there is evidence from studies of both children (Choo, 2022) and adults (Chang et al., 2022) that Mandarin tonal and segmental sequences are independent in word processing and production.

⁵ Note that these forms are not included in Table 2 because (i) neither ana nor haɕi are variegated targets and (ii) [badi] is neither a reduplicated nor a harmony form.

⁵ Note that these forms are not included in Table 2 because (i) neither ana nor haɕi are variegated targets and (ii) [badi] is neither a reduplicated nor a harmony form.