ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the types of tonal errors and their acoustic characteristics in early childhood by observing a child of the Beijing dialect from the ages of 1;02 to 2;00, with a total of 11 hours of speech materials. It also investigates the error issues regarding the tone learning of Beijing-dialect-speaking children by utilizing acoustic analyses. The value of such analyses is that they can remove subjective speculations and perceptual inductions from the assessment of acquisition errors. The significance of error analysis is that the process of children’s tone acquisition can be observed more clearly; by excluding the error rate to obtain the correction rate, a person can then statistically prove the order of acquisition of the four tones for each age group. This method may be more objective and scientific than previous methods. All of the descriptive observations regarding the order of tone acquisition and related errors are based on the recorded audio and video materials.
