title: The Development of Voiceless Sibilant Fricatives in Putonghua-Speaking Children.
abstract: The aims of the present study are (a) to quantify the developmental sequence of fricative mastery in Putonghua-speaking children and discuss the observed pattern in relation to existing theoretical positions, and (b) to describe the acquisition of the fine-articulatory/acoustic details of fricatives in the multidimensional acoustic space.
  
  
  
  Twenty adults and 97 children participated in a speech-production experiment, repeating a list of fricative-initial words. Two independent measures were applied to quantify the relative sequence of fricative acquisition: auditory-based phonetic transcription and acoustics-based statistical modeling. Two acoustic parameters-fricative centroid frequency and F2 onset-were used to index tongue-body and tongue-tip development, respectively.
  
  
  
  Both transcription and statistical modeling of acoustics yielded the sequence of /ɕ/ ⟶ /ʂ/ ⟶ /s/. Acoustic analysis further revealed gradual separation in both acoustic dimensions, with the initial undifferentiated form ambiguous between /ɕ/ and /ʂ/.
  
  
  
  The observed sound-acquisition order was interpreted as reflecting a combined influence of both oromotor maturation and language-specific phoneme frequency in Putonghua. Acoustic results suggest a maturational advantage of the tongue body over the tongue tip during fricative development.
authors.forename: Fangfang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Munson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D055815:Young Adult