Production of Mandarin tone by adults and children with normal hearing: significance for children with cochlear...

Mandarin Chinese is a tone language in which pitch variations are used to change the meanings of words. This study focused on the production of the four tones of Mandarin by adults and eight-year-old children with normal hearing, who spoke Mandarin as their first language. All speakers were recorded producing the tones in the syllable [ma]. Analysis of the speakers' productions of the four tones in [ma] showed that all of the children were able to produce the appropriate tonal contrasts. Some differences between the children and adult speakers were found in the duration of the tones. These data represent a benchmark against which the speech of children with implants can be compared.