本研究透過習得中文孩童對三聲不變調的產出及理解來探討孩童三聲變調的習得發展。三聲不變調和隨意三聲變調的表現在表層環境重疊，因此產生了可學性問題。也就是說，當孩童遇到了三聲不變調的例子，他們要怎麼知道這是一個真正的三聲不變調，而不是一個表層結構剛好是不變調的隨意三聲變調？本研究做了三個實驗以進一步釐清這個問題。
為了瞭解三聲不變調的表現，第一個實驗探究以中文為母語的成人如何產出三聲不變調。焦點特別放在三聲變調的環境中，第一個三聲正好是主題句或是形容詞子句中被修飾的名詞。37位成人參與了朗讀實驗。他們必須朗誦出六十個中文句子，其中包含了十句主題句、二十句形容詞子句及三十句的填充句。實驗結果顯示，雖然句子長度會影響聲調表現，但受試者大多將關鍵的音節發為三聲；這樣的三聲不變調結果較支持Chen(2000)所提出的最小韻律單位分析，因為此分析建立在音系單位上，而音系單位的劃分是會受句子長度影響而有所不同。
在建立成人三聲不變調的標準後，第二個實驗探索習得中文為母語孩童的三聲不變調產出。長期觀察的資料是來自三位孩童在一歲六個月至三歲十一個月之間的語言產出。撰寫分析結果顯示，三位孩童三聲變調的平均正確率高達98.55%。其中有三個三聲變調的環境和主題句有關；有兩個三聲變調的環境和形容詞子句有關。聲調判斷人員認為這五個句子中的關鍵音節皆為三聲。這樣的結果顯示，孩童在三歲前就已習得三聲不變調，並為早期三聲變調習得的主張提供佐證。
我主張Wang(2011)無法觀察到兒童早期三聲變調習得的原因是因為她使用的實驗方法太困難。為了驗證此假說，本研究第三個實驗採取較不會消耗孩童理解資源的理解作業。在這個實驗中，二十位年齡介於三歲九個月至四歲三個月的孩童（平均為四歲整）及五十六位成人需要判斷他們所聽到的句子是否符合所看到的圖片。而三聲不變調的知識將會影響他們對句子的理解。結果顯示，在含有三聲不變調的主題句的理解上，四歲孩童和成人並無不同。這樣的結果為早期三聲變調習得的主張提供進一步證據。同時，本實驗結果較支持衍生學派所提出的語言習得理論，因為此理論成功地預測習得中文孩童的三聲不變調的習得進展。
本研究的實驗結果提供了以下四點結論：1) Chen (2000)的最小韻律單位分析可以同時解釋中文三聲變調和三聲不變調的現象；2) Wang (2011)無法觀察到早期三聲變調習得是因為她的實驗方法消耗了孩童太多的理解資源，進一步影響他們的語言表現；3) 使用基礎學派的語言習得理論 ( e.g. Tomasello, 2003)無法解釋本研究結果，因為三聲不變調出現的環境是三聲變調的子集，所以早期的三聲不變調習得無法單靠經語言經驗解釋；4) 衍生學派的語言習得理論 (e.g. Chomsky, 1981)可以解釋本研究結果，因為抽象的詞類被視為普通語法的一部份，所以可以在孩童早期時協助他們習得三聲不變調。

The purpose of this study is to investigate the acquisition of Tone Three Sandhi (T3S) by focusing on Mandarin-acquiring children’s productions and comprehension of Tone Three Sandhi Avoidance (T3SA). The fact that T3SA overlaps with the optional T3S poses a learnability problem. That is, when children encounter an instance of T3SA, how do they know that the instance is a real case of T3SA but not a case of optional T3S where the surface tone happens to be a citation tone (i.e. Tone 3)? Three experiments were conducted to shed light on this learnability problem.
The first experiment investigated the surface tone patterns of Mandarin-speaking adults when the critical/first syllable of two adjacent Tone 3 syllables was a topic or the noun being modified by a clause (i.e. a relative clause). Thirty-seven adults participated the recitation task. They are invited to recite a list of sixty sentences, including ten sentences with topics, twenty sentences with relative clauses and thirty filler sentences. The results showed that adults generally produced Tone 3 for the target syllables, showing that T3S was generally avoided among topics and relative clauses. Although sentence length had an effect on surface tone preference, the phenomenon could be accommodated by Chen’s (2000) Minimal Rhythmic Units (MRU) analysis because the formation of MRUs can be affected by sentence length.
After the adults’ T3SA norm was established, the second experiment investigated Mandarin-acquiring children’s production of T3SA. Specifically, the longitudinal data from three children aged 1;6 to 3;11 were transcribed and analyzed. The results indicated that the average T3S accuracy rate was 98.55%. Additionally, three T3SA utterances involving topics and two T3SA utterances involving relative clauses were found. The coder of the one consistently reported that all the target syllables were Tone 3, indicating that children acquired T3SA at early stages, supporting the view of early acquisition of T3S.
As I argued, Wang’s (2011) failure in observing young children’s adult-like T3S productions was due to her complex experimental designs. In this connection, in the third experiment, I adopted a comprehension task, which consumed less children’s processing capacity. In this experiment, twenty children aged between 3;9 to 4;3 (Mean: 4;0) and fifty-six adults were invited to judge if the heard sentence was an accurate description of a given picture. The knowledge in T3SA would affect their acceptability judgment. The results demonstrated that 4-year-olds comprehended T3SA involving topics in the same way as adults did, adding strong support to the view of early T3S acquisition. Additionally, the current results support the generative approach to language acquisition because the theory successfully predicted the development of T3S acquisition in Mandarin Chinese.
Based on the experimental results, the study concludes that: 1) Chen’s (2000) MRU analysis is able to accommodate both T3S and T3SA phenomena in Mandarin Chinese; 2) Wang (2011) failed to observe children’s early T3S performance because her experiments consumed much of children’s processing burden, which in turn affected their linguistic performance (c.f. Liu & Lee, 2014; Trueswell et al., 1999); 3) The usage-based approach to language acquisition (e.g. Tomasello, 2003) could not accommodate the current results as the environment of T3SA is a subset of the optional T3S and therefore T3SA cannot be acquired early solely by experience; 4) The generative approach to language acquisition (e.g. Chomsky, 1981) could accommodate the current results because abstract syntactic categories are considered innate knowledge, which could assist children’s acquisition of T3SA in the early developmental stages.

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