聲調在中文具有辨義的功能，而聽障孩童由於在接收自己和他人所發出的語音回饋時有缺損，因而將導致在聲調學習上遭遇困難。本研究想探討聽障小孩與聽常小孩間聲調習得上的時間差異，以及從聲學分析來看兩群組間聲調有何不同。
本研究分成兩個部分，分別是長期研究有一位聽障孩童及斷層研究有聽障及聽常孩童各六位。我們分別以聲調錯誤率、及優選理論(Optimality Theory)、及聲學分析去分析比較聽障及聽常孩童聲調的不同。在聲調錯誤率方面，發現長期受試者的一聲的錯誤率最低，而四聲的出現率最高。而其一聲四聲常互相取代，二聲三聲也常互相取代。斷層受試者的錯誤率方面，只有聽常組的一聲顯著低於二聲、三聲顯著低於二聲、和四聲顯著低於二聲。聲調在優選理論分析方面，我們發現聽障受試者的三聲二疊詞制約排序比起聽常受試者需要更多的時間才會與大人的排序相同。至於聲學分析方面，在長期及斷層研究裡，比較聽常及聽障兩組間的聲學參數後發現聽障受試者聲長過常、聲調曲線較為平淡無曲折。
總結本論文，以聲調錯誤率、聲調出現頻率、錯誤聲調取代模式及聲調制約排序來看，我們發現聽障受試者在聲調習得方面需要較長的時間，但基本上他們聲調學習的過程上是相似的。另外，聲學參數部分顯示聽障與聽常群組的受試者間的差異相當大。

Tones in Mandarin Chinese are essential for determining lexical meanings. Lacking sufficient auditory feedback, Mandarin-speaking hearing-impaired children may have a hard time mastering tones.The present study aims to investigate how the time course of tone acquisition of hearing-impaired children of pre-school age differs from that of hearing-normal children of the same age. We also want to examine the differences between the acoustic tonal values of the tones produced by hearing-impaired children of pre-school age and those produced by children of the same age with normal hearing. One hearing-impaired subject (CY) participated in longitudinal study, and six hearing-normal and six hearing impaired subjects in the cross-sectional study. First, we calculated the percentage error of tone production. Constraints of Optimality Theory (OT) were then applied to analyze subjects’ third tone reduplicants. In addition, acoustic analysis was conducted to analyze the values of tones, measuring beginning point, middle point, end point, inflectional point, slope, and duration.
Results showed that in CY’s speech, tone 1 has the lowest percentage error rate, and we found tone 4 appears predominantly. CY substituted tone 1 and tone 4; and tone 2 and tone 3 mutually. Significant differences of tone percentage error rate between the mean scores for tones were shown in NH group only; tone 1 is significantly lower than tone 2, tone 3 than 2, and tone 4 than 2. HI and NH groups showed similar tone error realization patterns: tone 2 tended to be realized as tone 1, tone 3 as tone 2, and tone 4 as tone 1. For OT analysis, we found that OT revealed the mismatch between HI subjects’ and NH ones’ constraints ranking; namely, HI subjects need longer time than do NH subjects to have the correct adult constraints ranking. Moreover, the HI speakers’ tones were exceptionally long in duration and abnormally high in fundamental frequency. Their tonal shapes tend to be flat, in contrast to the tonal shapes of HI group, which had distinctive shapes. To conclude, hearing loss means HI subjects need more time than NH participants to complete their tone acquisition. Yet, it has also been found that the hearing-impaired children in this study pass through a fundamentally similar, but not identical, tone acquisition process as children in NH group, in terms of tone percentage error rate, tone occurrence, and error tone realization pattern. In addition, the hearing-impaired speakers’ tones acoustic values are very different from those made by hearing-normal subjects.

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