Consonants and vowels have been considered to fulfill different functions in language processing, vowels being more important for prosodic and syntactic processes and consonants for lexically related processes (Nespor, Peña, & Mehler, 2003). This C-bias hypothesis in lexical processing is supported by studies with adults and infants in many languages such as English, French, Spanish, although a few studies, on Danish and Mandarin, suggest the existence of cross-linguistic variation. The present study explores whether a C-bias exists in a tone language with a complex tone system, Cantonese, by comparing the relative weight given to consonants, vowels, and also tones during word learning. To do so, looking behaviors of Cantonese-learning 20- and 30-month-olds (24 children per age/condition, 6 groups) were recorded by an eyetracker while they watched animated cartoons in Cantonese to learn pairs of novel words. The words differed minimally by either a consonant (e.g., /tœ6/ vs. /kœ6/), a vowel (e.g., /k^him3/ vs. /k^hɛm3/), or a tone (e.g., T2 vs. T5). Analyses on proportional looking times revealed significant learning in 30-month-olds only, and at that age, only for the vowel contrasts. Growth curve analyses revealed better performance for the vowel condition compared to the other two conditions. The present findings establish a V-bias in Cantonese-learning 30-month-olds, adding new evidence from that tone language that the C-bias in lexical processing is not language-general. Implications for theoretical discussions on the origins of this phonological bias, and the impact of tones in early language acquisition, are discussed.

辅音和元音被认为在语言处理中完成不同的功能，元音对于韵律和句法过程更重要，而辅音对于词汇相关过程更重要（Nespor、Peña 和 Mehler，2003 年）。这种词汇加工中的 C 偏向假设得到了对成人和婴儿使用多种语言（如英语、法语、西班牙语）的研究的支持，尽管一些关于丹麦语和普通话的研究表明存在跨语言变异。本研究通过比较单词学习过程中辅音、元音和声调的相对权重，探讨了在具有复杂声调系统粤语的声调语言中是否存在 C 偏向。为此，学习粤语的 20 个月和 30 个月大的孩子（每个年龄/条件 24 个孩子，6 组）在观看粤语动画的过程中，用眼动仪记录下来，学习成对的新词。这些词与辅音的差别很小（例如，/t –6/ vs. / k –6/)、元音（例如，/k ^h i m3/ vs. /k ^h ɛ m3/）或声调（例如，T2 vs. T5）。对比例观看时间的分析显示，只有 30 个月大的孩子有显着的学习能力，而且在那个年龄，只有元音对比。增长曲线分析显示，与其他两种条件相比，元音条件的性能更好。目前的研究结果在学习粤语的 30 个月大的孩子中建立了 V-bias，增加了来自该声调语言的新证据，即词汇处理中的 C-bias 不是语言通用的。讨论了对这种语音偏见起源的理论讨论的影响，以及声调在早期语言习得中的影响。