Developmental Change in F0 of Cantonese-Speaking Pre-adolescent Children

This paper presents the developmental fundamental frequency (F0) data from Cantonesespeaking pre-adolescent children, male and female. Results of frequency analysis of the speech data from children of nine age groups from 4 to 12 years show that (i) there is an overall drop in F0 across the nine age groups of both genders and a larger change for male than female children; (ii) a significant difference in F0 between male and female children emerges at age 12 as a result of a large F0 drop in male but not female children; (iii) the F0 for male children of age 12 is half an octave higher than that for male adults, but the 12-yearold female children reach the adult-like F0 pattern; and (iv) the patterns of developmental F0 between Cantonese-speaking and English-speaking children are similar, except for the differences in the F0 drop between age 5 and age 6 and in the 12-yearold male children between the two languages.