In the current study, late Chinese–English bilinguals performed a facial expression identification task with emotion words in the task-irrelevant dimension, in either their first language or second language. The investigation examined the automatic access of the emotional content in words appearing in more than one language. Significant congruency effects were present for both L1 and L2 emotion word processing. Furthermore, the magnitude of emotional face-word Stroop effect in the L1 task was greater as compared to the (...) L2 task, indicating that in L1 participants could access the emotional information in words in a more reliable manner. In summary, these findings provide more support for the automatic access of emotional information in words in the bilinguals’ two languages as well as attenuated emotionality of L2 processing. (shrink)

Different writing systems in the world select different units of spoken language for mapping. Do these writing system differences influence how first language (L1) literacy experiences affect cognitive processes in learning to read a second language (L2)? Two groups of college students who were learning to read English as a second language (ESL) were examined for their relative reliance on phonological and orthographic processing in English word identification: Korean students with an alphabetic L1 literacy background, and Chinese (...) students with a nonalphabetic L1 literacy background. In a semantic category judgment task, Korean ESL learners made more false positive errors in judging stimuli that were homophones to category exemplars than they did in judging spelling controls. However, there were no significant differences in responses to stimuli in these two conditions for Chinese ESL learners. Chinese ESL learners, on the other hand, made more accurate responses to stimuli that were less similar in spelling to category exemplars than those that were more similar. Chinese ESL learners may rely less on phonological information and more on orthographic information in identifying English words than their Korean counterparts. Further evidence supporting this argument came from a phoneme deletion task in which Chinese subjects performed more poorly overall than their Korean counterparts and made more errors that were phonologically incorrect but orthographically acceptable. We suggest that cross-writing system differences in L1s and L1 reading skills transfer could be responsible for these ESL performance differences. (shrink)

This study investigated the possible prosodic transfer influences native regional dialects may have in the perception of English lexical stress by speakers of three Chinese dialects [Beijing (BJ), Changsha (CS), and Guangzhou (GZ)] compared to 20 American English (AE) speakers. F0, duration, intensity, and vowel reduction were manipulated in nonce disyllabic words. Participants performed four-word sequence recall tasks to identify lexical stress location. They performed better with natural sounds than with manipulated words. This study focused (...) on the performance differences in manipulating words. The results showed that all four-group members performed similarly processing F0 condition nonce words. BJ and CS participants were more accurate than GZ participants in duration and vowel reduction cues. Reaction time (RT) suggested that the processing time of acoustic cues differed significantly across language groups. The findings indicate that first language (L1) dialect effect is robust in second language (L2) stress perception tasks. (shrink)

The effects of psycholinguistic variables on reading development are critical to the evaluation of theories about the reading system. Although we know that the development of reading depends on both individual differences (endogenous) and item-level effects (exogenous), developmental research has focused mostly on average-level performance, ignoring individual differences. We investigated how the development of word recognition in Chinese children in both Chinese and English is affected by (a) item-level, exogenous effects (word frequency, radical consistency, and curricular grade (...) level); (b) subject-level, endogenous individual differences (orthographic awareness and phonological awareness); and (c) their interactive effect. We tested native Chinese (Putonghua)-speaking children (n = 763) in grades 1 to 6 with both Chinese character and English word identification (lexical) decision tasks. Our findings show that (a) there were effects of both word frequency and age of acquisition in both Chinese and English, but these item-level effects generally weakened with increasing age; (b) individual differences in phonological and orthographic awareness each contributed to successful performance; and (c) in Chinese, item-level effects were weaker for more proficient readers. We contend that our findings can be explained by theoretical models that incorporate cumulative learning as the basis for development of item-level effects in the reading system. (shrink)

Translation equivalents for cognates in different script systems share the same meaning and phonological similarity but are different orthographically. Event-related potentials were recorded during the visual recognition of cross-script cognates and non-cognates together with concreteness factors while Chinese learners of English performed a lexical decision task with the masked translation priming paradigm in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. N400 effect was found to be closely related to priming effects of cross-script cognate status and concreteness in Experiment 1; and (...) in Experiment 2, N150 and N400 effects were related to priming effects of cross-script cognate status and concreteness, and greater priming effects of cross-script cognate status in cognates than in non-cognates for abstract words were found in the time window of 100–200 ms. Meanwhile, the asymmetry of translation directions was observed in smaller priming effects in forward translation than in backward translation in the time window of 100–200 ms for abstract cognates, and in larger priming effects in forward translation than in backward translation in the time window of 350–550 ms for each type of words. We discussed the roles of phonological activation and concreteness effects in view of the function of N150 and N400 components as well as the relevant models, mainly the Distributed Feature Model and Bilingual Interactive Activation model. (shrink)

Children traditionally learn to read Chinese characters by rote, and thus stretching children’s memory span could possibly improve their reading in Chinese. Nevertheless, 85% of Chinese characters are semantic-phonetic compounds that contain probabilistic information about meaning and pronunciation. Hence, enhancing children’s metalinguistic skills might also facilitate reading in Chinese. In the present study we tested whether training children’s metalinguistic skills or training their working-memory capacity in eight weeks would produce reading gains, and whether these gains would (...) be similar in Chinese and English. We recruited 35 second graders in Hong Kong and randomly assigned them to a metalinguistic training group (N = 13), a working-memory training group (10), or a waitlist control group (12). In the metalinguistic training, children were taught to analyze novel Chinese characters into phonetic and semantic radicals and novel English words into onsets and rimes. In the working-memory training, children were trained to recall increasingly long strings of Cantonese or English syllables in correct or reverse order. All children were tested on phonological skills, verbal working memory, and word reading fluency in Chinese and in English before and after training. Analyses of the pre- and post-test data revealed that only the metalinguistic training group, but not the other two groups, showed significant improvement on phonological skills in Chinese and English. Working-memory span in Chinese and English increased from the pre- to post-test in the working-memory training group relative to other two groups. Despite these domain-specific training effects, the two training groups improved similarly in word reading fluency in Chinese and English compared to the control group. Our findings suggest that increased metalinguistic skills and a larger working-memory span appear equally beneficial to reading fluency, and that these effects are similar in Chinese and English. (shrink)

Unlike in English, the role of phonology in word recognition in Chinese is unclear. In this event-related potential experiment, we investigated the role of phonology in reading both high- and low-frequency two-character compound Chinese words. Participants executed semantic and homophone judgment tasks of the same precede-target pairs. Each pair of either high- or low-frequency words were either unrelated or related semantically or phonologically. The induced P200 component was greater for low- than for high-frequency word-pairs both (...) in semantic and phonological tasks. Homophones in the semantic judgment task and semantically-related words in the phonology task both elicited a smaller N400 than the control condition, word frequency-independently. However, for low-frequency words in the phonological judgment task, it was found that the semantically related pairs released a significantly larger P200 than the control condition. Thus, the semantic activation of both high- and low-frequency words may be no later than phonological activation. (shrink)

In alphabetic writing systems (such as English), the spaces between words mark the word boundaries, and the basic unit of reading is distinguished during visual-level processing. The visual-level information of word boundaries facilitates reading. Chinese is an ideographic language whose text contains no intrinsic inter-word spaces as the marker of word boundaries. Previous studies have shown that the basic processing unit of Chinese reading is also a word. However, findings remain inconsistent regarding whether inserting spaces between (...) words in Chinese text promotes reading performance. Researchers have proposed that there may be a trade-off between format familiarity and the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces. In order to verify this, this study manipulated the format familiarity via reversing the Chinese reading direction from right to left to investigate this issue in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether inter-word spaces facilitated Chinese reading in an unfamiliar format. Experiment 1 was conducted that 40 native Chinese undergraduates read Chinese sentences from right to left on four format conditions. The results showed faster reading speed and shorter total reading time for the inter-word spaced format. Based on this finding, Experiment 2 examined whether the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces would reduce or disappear after improving the format familiarity; this experiment was conducted that 40 native Chinese undergraduates who did not participate in Experiment 1 read Chinese sentences from right to left on four format conditions after ten-day reading training. There was no significant difference between the total reading time and reading speed in the inter-word spaced format and unspaced format, which suggests that the facilitation effect of inter-word spaces in Chinese reading changed smaller. The combined results of the two experiments suggest that there is indeed a trade-off between format familiarity and the facilitation of word segmentation, which supports the assumption of previous studies. (shrink)

The brain processes underlying the distinction between emotion-label words (e.g. happy, sad) and emotion-laden words (e.g. successful, failed) remain inconclusive in bilingualism research. The present study aims to directly compare the processing of these two types of emotion words in both the first language (L1) and second language (L2) by recording event-related potentials (ERP) from late Chinese-English bilinguals during a lexical decision task. The results revealed that in the early word processing stages, the N170 emotion (...) effect emerged only for L1 negative emotion-laden words and L2 negative emotion-label words. In addition, larger early posterior negativity (EPN) was elicited by emotion-laden words than emotion-label words in both L1 and L2. In the later processing stages, the N400 emotion effect was evident for L1 emotion words, excluding positive emotion-laden words, while it was absent in L2. Notably, L1 emotion words elicited enhanced N400 and attenuated late positive complex (LPC) compared to those in L2. Taken together, these findings confirmed the engagement of emotion, and highlighted the modulation of emotion word type and valence on word processing in both early and late processing stages. Different neural mechanisms between L1 and L2 in processing written emotion words were elucidated. (shrink)

This longitudinal study investigated how different mediums of word explanation affected the use of English vocabulary strategies among Chinese Grade-7 students. 170 students were tested on their English receptive vocabulary size and vocabulary strategy application before and after an 8.33-month intervention. Students were divided into three experimental groups and one control group. The three experimental groups were provided with learning materials that explained the target vocabulary in three mediums respectively: English-only, English-and-Chinese, and Chinese-only. (...) Results showed that, after the intervention, receptive vocabulary size did not have any direct significant impact on vocabulary strategy development, whereas mediums of word explanation materials impacted students' application of vocabulary learning strategies in different ways. Our findings showed that the English-only medium significantly enhanced students' use of metacognition, cognition, and memorization strategies, but decreased social strategy development. Chinese-only medium significantly facilitated cognition and memorization strategy development. Implications for L2 vocabulary education are discussed. (shrink)

In a digital era that neglects handwriting, the current study is significant because it examines the mechanisms underlying this process. We recruited 9- to 10-year-old Chinese children, who were at an important period of handwriting development, and adult college students, for both behavioral and electroencephalogram experiments. We designed four learning conditions: handwriting Chinese, viewing Chinese, drawing shapes followed by Chinese recognition, and drawing shapes followed by English recognition. Both behavioral and EEG results showed that HC (...) facilitated visual word recognition compared to VC, and behavioral results showed that HC facilitated visual word recognition compared to drawing shapes. HC and VC resulted in a lateralization of the N170 in adults, but not in children. Taken together, the results of the study suggest benefits of handwriting on the neural processing and behavioral performance in response to Chinese characters. The study results argue for maintaining handwriting practices to promote the perception of visual word forms in the digital age. (shrink)

Parts of the body are often embedded in the structure of compound words, such as heartbreak and brainchild. We explored the relationships between the semantics of compounds and their constituent body parts, asking whether these relationships are largely arbitrary or instead reflect deeper metaphorical mappings shared across languages and cultures. In three studies, we found that U.S. English speakers associated the English translation equivalents of Chinese compounds with their constituent body parts at rates well above chance, (...) even for compounds with highly abstract meanings and even when accounting for the semantic relatedness of the compounds and body parts. English speakers in India and Chinese speakers in Hong Kong showed similar intuitions about these associations. Our results suggest that the structure of compound words can provide insight into cross‐culturally shared ways of connecting meaning to the body. (shrink)

Spoken word recognition involves a perceptual tradeoff between the reliance on the incoming acoustic signal and knowledge about likely sound categories and their co-occurrences as words. This study examined how adult second language (L2) learners navigate between acoustic-based and knowledge-based spoken word recognition when listening to highly variable, multi-talker truncated speech, and whether this perceptual tradeoff changes as L2 listeners gradually become more proficient in their L2 after multiple months of structured classroom learning. First language (L1) Mandarin Chinese (...) listeners and L1 English-L2 Mandarin adult listeners took part in a gating experiment. The L2 listeners were tested twice—once at the start of their intermediate/advanced L2 language class and again two months later. L1 listeners were only tested once. Participants were asked to identify syllable-tone words that varied in syllable token frequency (high/low according to a spoken word corpus) and syllable-conditioned tonal probability (most probable/least probable in speech given the syllable). The stimuli were recorded by 16 different talkers and presented at eight gates ranging from onset-only (gate 1) through onset+40 ms increments (gates 2 through 7) to the full word (gate 8). Mixed-effects regression modeling was used to compare performance to our previous study which used single-talker stimuli (Wiener, Lee, & Tao, 2019). The results indicated that multi-talker speech caused both L1 and L2 listeners to rely greater on knowledge-based processing of tone. L1 listeners were able to draw on distributional knowledge of syllable-tone probabilities in early gates and switch to predominantly acoustic-based processing when more of the signal was available. In contrast, L2 listeners, with their limited experience with talker range normalization, were less able to effectively transition from probability-based to acoustic-based processing. Moreover, for the L2 listeners, the reliance on such distributional information for spoken word recognition appeared to be conditioned by the nature of the acoustic signal. Single-talker speech did not result in the same pattern of probability-based tone processing, suggesting that knowledge-based processing of L2 speech may only occur under certain acoustic conditions, such as multi-talker speech. (shrink)

This essay sets out to search for an equivalent Chinese word to the English word ‘justice’ in classical Chinese language, through ancient Chinese philosophical texts, imperial codes and idioms. The study found that there does not seem to be a linguistic sign for ‘justice’ in classical Chinese, and further, yi resembles ‘justice’ in some ways and has been used sometimes to translate ‘justice’, but yi is a complex concept in traditional Chinese philosophy with multiple (...) meanings and it is dissimilar to ‘justice’ in their semantic and pragmatic meanings in Chinese and English legal culture. While ‘justice’ is a keyword and fundamental to Western law, yi is not a legal word or concept in classical Chinese in traditional China. Given its complexity, yi does not have a one-to-one equivalent in English. It sometimes carries a sense of ‘righteousness’ and occasionally ‘justice’, but yi and ‘justice’ are not equivalent. In view of these, it becomes understandable that the translations of yi in contemporary Chinese usage vary ranging from ‘friendship and justice’ to ‘greater good’, among others. The meaning of yi is still uncertain and context sensitive as it was two thousand years ago. (shrink)

This paper proposes a feature extraction algorithm based on the maximum entropy phrase reordering model in statistical machine translation in language learning machines. The algorithm can extract more accurate phrase reordering information, especially the feature information of reversed phrases, which solves the problem of imbalance of feature data during maximum entropy training in the original algorithm, and improves the accuracy of phrase reordering in translation. In the experiment, they were combined with linguistic features such as parts of speech, words, (...) and syntactic features extracted by using the syntax analyzer, and the maximum entropy classifier was used to predict translation errors, and the experimental verification was performed on the Chinese-English translation data set and compared. The experimental results show that different word posterior probabilities have a significant impact on the classification error rate, and the combination of linguistic features based on the word posterior probability can significantly reduce the classification error rate and improve the translation error prediction performance. (shrink)

Our understanding of the cognitive processes involved in reading has been advanced by computational models that simulate those processes. Unfortunately, most of these models have been developed to explain the reading of English and other alphabetic languages, with relatively fewer efforts to examine whether or not the assumptions of these models also explain what has been learned from other languages and, in particular, non-alphabetic writing systems like Chinese. In this article, we will review those computational models that have (...) been developed to explain the reading of Chinese, with the goal of comparing their theoretical assumptions to those of models that explain the reading of English. Our analysis indicates that there are both points of convergence and divergence between the theoretical assumptions of Chinese versus English models, suggesting that the cognitive systems supporting reading may be differentially influenced by features of the languages and/or writing systems, or that certain theoretical assumptions developed to explain the reading of one language might be adapted to explain the reading of others. (shrink)

This book is a cognitive semantic study of the Chinese conceptualization of the heart, traditionally seen as the central faculty of cognition. The Chinese word xin, which primarily denotes the heart organ, covers the meanings of both "heart" and "mind" as understood in English, which upholds a heart-head dichotomy. In contrast to the Western dualist view, Chinese takes on a more holistic view that sees the heart as the center of both emotions and thought. The contrast (...) characterizes two cultural traditions that have developed different conceptualizations of person, self, and agent of cognition. The concept of "heart" lies at the core of Chinese thought and medicine, and its importance to Chinese culture is extensively manifested in the Chinese language. Diachronically, this book traces the roots of its conception in ancient Chinese philosophy and traditional Chinese medicine. Along the synchronic dimension, it not only makes a systematic analysis of conventionalized expressions that reflect the underlying cultural models and conceptualizations, as well as underlying conceptual metaphors and metonymies, but also attempts a textual analysis of an essay and a number of poems for their metaphoric and metonymic images and imports contributing to the cultural models and conceptualizations. It also takes up a comparative perspective that sheds light on similarities and differences between Western and Chinese cultures in the understanding of the heart, brain, body, mind, self, and person. The book contributes to the understanding of the embodied nature of human cognition situated in its cultural context, and the relationship between language, culture, and cognition. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an increasing academic interest in Chinese homosexuality; however, linguistic-oriented research on this topic is scant and multimodal inquiry on it is even rarer. To address the gap, this article conducts a discourse analysis of how tongzhi in mainland China are represented by news media. Specifically, we examine both linguistic and visual representations of tongzhi by utilizing two influential English-language newspapers in mainland China published between 2009 and 2019. Our data consist of 221 news articles (...) totaling 117,407 words; 44 of the articles are accompanied with pictures. Methodologically, we draw on Halliday’s transitivity structure coupled with van Leeuwen’s classification of social actors. Our findings reveal that Chinese tongzhi are mainly represented in a negative fashion, and that there is little positive news representation of this invisible community. In addition, socio-cultural factors contributing to media representations of Chinese tongzhi are considered. (shrink)

We report an eye movement experiment that investigates the effects of collocation strength and contextual predictability on the reading of collocative phrases by L2 English readers. Thirty-eight Chinese English as foreign language learners read 40 sentences, each including a specific two-word phrase that was either a strong or weak adjective-noun collocation and was either highly predictable or unpredictable from the previous sentence context. Eye movement measures showed that L2 reading times for the collocative phrases were sensitive to (...) both collocation strength and contextual predictability. However, an interaction effect between these factors, which appeared relatively late in the eye movement record, additionally revealed that contextual predictability more strongly influenced time spent reading weak compared with strong collocations. This was most likely because the greater familiarity of strong collocations facilitated their integration, even in the absence of strong contextual constraint. We discuss the findings in terms of the value of collocations in second language learning. (shrink)

The paper shows that contextuals, words such as those discussed by Richard Vallée in his paper, “On local bars and imported beer”, include not only adjectives and nouns but also verbs, prepositions and adverbs. It shows, moreover, contextuals form just one subclass of words whose complements are optional, that is, words analogous to polyadic predicates of predicate logic. Just as different words, when their complements are omitted, give rise to reflexive (to wash), reciprocal (to meet) and (...) indefinite (to eat) construals, so contextuals give rise to an indexical construal. The paper sets out how such optional complements, or polyadic predicates, as it were, can be handled completely with the syntax and semantics of English, without recourse to special pragmatic principles, lexical ambiguity or phonetically null elements. Though not discussed here, the approach nonetheless applies, it seems, to other languages, such as Chinese. (shrink)

The prevalence in Chinese of grammatical structures that translate into English in different word orders is an important cause of translation difficulty. While previous work has used phrase-structure parses to deal with such ordering problems, we introduce a richer set of Chinese grammatical relations that describes more semantically abstract relations between words. Using these Chinese grammatical relations, we improve a phrase orientation classifier (introduced by Zens and Ney (2006)) that decides the ordering of two phrases (...) when translated into English by adding path features designed over the Chinese typed dependencies. We then apply the log probability of the phrase orientation classifier as an extra feature in a phrase-based MT system, and get significant BLEU point gains on three test sets: MT02 (+0.59), MT03 (+1.00) and MT05 (+0.77). Our Chinese grammatical relations are also likely to be useful for other NLP tasks. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and AestheticsJoseph GrangeIn Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics. By François Jullien. Translated by Paul M. Varsano. New York: Zone Books, 2004. Pp. 1,969.A book praising "blandness"—which is the translator's English word for the French fadeur, which is the author's translation of the Chinese dan!—and a book that is at once fascinating and (...) "repellent" (to use the translator's description of his tortuous search for an equivalent of fadeur and dan), In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics by François Jullien is a "globalizing" philosophical essay bent on stopping readers in their tracks at every twist and turn of the text. Is it worth the trouble? I shall venture a response in this review.More than once while reading this book, I was reminded of Plato's Sophist, where the difficulty in locating the sophist is described in such intricate detail. First he is here, but then he is over there; on the other hand, he could be hiding near by— but wait, maybe he has disappeared. So it is also with blandness. And perhaps it should be so, because once you have located the bland, it ceases to be bland and turns into something else. To take a fix on blandness Jullien throws it against a number of traits, qualities, experiences, and events: strength, music, sounds, signs, landscapes, painting, tastes, literature, ideology, margins and centers, and, finally, the fact that "transcendence is natural." At the same time, the author weaves these contrasts and comparisons through the history of Chinese culture, especially in the evolution of its painting and poetry. [End Page 484]Foremost among the qualities associated with blandness is inner detachment. What come immediately to mind are Daoism, Chan Buddhism, and aspects of Confucian teaching. Jullien has already given us a splendid treatise in his The Propensities of Things, and in some ways this volume rings many changes on that study of Chinese culture. But there is more to blandness than causal efficacy. It also suggests openness and a mood of friendliness toward the other, the different, and all things strange. Further, blandness is similar to harmony in the sense that it does not insist on its own presence. Rather, it constantly blends together opposites through its own power.It is power and its expression that is at the heart of the author's project. He attempts over and over again to show how the seemingly weak is actually the strong, that the far away is really close to hand, that emptiness is charged with spontaneous creative energy. Thus, what lingers is not yet finished expressing itself. And the translator tells us that a gustatory sense is the primary base of fadeur, dan, and blandness. The body is the region within which the bland can have its most powerful effect. Think of Chinese medicine, where "the web that has no weaver" (the title of Ted Kaptchuk's brilliant book) is the object of the physician's art. Or consider the power of water to yield and then conquer all. Or remember the Mahāyāna Buddhist's invocation of śūnyatā as the source of healing and renewal. Or recall the many times that Confucius advises silence rather than words. All these moments are akin to what Jullien calls "blandness."One way to grasp the insight into Chinese culture that Jullien is struggling with is to express it by way of Neoplatonism and Spinoza. What is often forgotten in expositions of these formidable philosophies is the way in which they use a novel doctrine of causality to bind together different realms of beings. For Plotinus and Spinoza the cause never really leaves the effect but remains there, hidden but effective. It is through this lingering presence that transcendence and immanence, body and soul, and God and the World remain conjoined. The image of the ladder so frequently found in these texts must be understood to run in both directions—up and down. So also, blandness is a dao that opens up experience to further depths and heights.Jullien's major concern is aesthetics... (shrink)

To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the present study investigated English–Mandarin bilingual infants’ abilities to negotiate phonological conflict introduced by learning both a tone and a non-tone language. (...) In a novel word learning task, bilingual children were tested on their sensitivity to tone variation in English and Mandarin contexts. Their abilities to interpret tone variation in a language-dependent manner were compared to those of monolingual Mandarin learning infants. Results demonstrated that at 12–13 months, bilingual infants demonstrated the ability to bind tone to word meanings in Mandarin, but to disregard tone variation when learning new words in English. In contrast, monolingual learners of Mandarin did not show evidence of integrating tones into word meanings in Mandarin at the same age even though they were learning a tone language. However, a tone discrimination paradigm confirmed that monolingual Mandarin learning infants were able to tell these tones apart at 12–13 months under a different set of conditions. Later, at 17–18 months, monolingual Mandarin learners were able to bind tone variation to word meanings when learning new words. Our findings are discussed in terms of cognitive adaptations associated with bilingualism that may ease the negotiation of phonological conflict and facilitate precocious uptake of certain properties of each language. (shrink)

This title considers whether any generalisations can be made about word order in language. The chapters, written by international scholars, draw on data from several 'disharmonic' and typologically distinct languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Basque, French, English, Hixkaryana (a Cariban language), Khalkha Mongolian, Uyghur Turkic, and Afrikaans.

In the Chinese text of the *Vimuttimagga, namely the Ji?tu? dào lùn, the word ji? is used as a technical abhidhamma term. It is used to refer to an initial cognitive activity through the five material sense organs. In the published English translation, the term is not understood clearly. There are similarities and differences between the two terms, ji? and visayappavatti. They are linked to similar doctrinal structures and technical terminology, especially the concept of bhava?ga, which is a (...) distinctive doctrine of Sri Lankan Therav?da. On the other hand, visayappavatti implies an initial cognitive activity by any of the six sense organs, while the term ji? refers to an initial cognitive activity only through the five material sense organs. A comparative study of the two terms proposes the following implications. Firstly, the text *Vimuttimagga is related to Sri Lankan P?li abhidhamma because the orientation of the two terms is more than similar. Secondly, the text represents an early phase of the extant P?li abhidhamma because the term ji? is less mature terminology than the term visayappavatti. (shrink)

Studies of linguistic synaesthesias in English have shown a range of fine-grained language mechanisms governing the associations between colours on the one hand, and graphemes, phonemes and words on the other. However, virtually nothing is known about how synaesthetic colouring might operate in non-alphabetic systems. The current study shows how synaesthetic speakers of Mandarin Chinese come to colour the logographic units of their language. Both native and non-native Chinese speakers experienced synaesthetic colours for characters, and for (...) words spelled in the Chinese spelling systems of Pinyin and Bopomo. We assessed the influences of lexical tone and Pinyin/Bopomo spelling and showed that synaesthetic colours are assigned to Chinese words in a non-random fashion. Our data show that Chinese-speaking synaesthetes with very different native languages can exhibit both differences and similarities in the ways in which they come to colour their Chinese words. (shrink)

Through computational modeling, here we examine whether visual and task characteristics of writing systems alone can account for lateralization differences in visual word recognition between different languages without assuming influence from left hemisphere (LH) lateralized language processes. We apply a hemispheric processing model of face recognition to visual word recognition; the model implements a theory of hemispheric asymmetry in perception that posits low spatial frequency biases in the right hemisphere and high spatial frequency (HSF) biases in the LH. We show (...) two factors that can influence lateralization: (a) Visual similarity among words: The more similar the words in the lexicon look visually, the more HSF/LH processing is required to distinguish them, and (b) Requirement to decompose words into graphemes for grapheme-phoneme mapping: Alphabetic reading (involving grapheme-phoneme conversion) requires more HSF/LH processing than logographic reading (no grapheme-phoneme mapping). These factors may explain the difference in lateralization between English and Chinese orthographic processing. (shrink)

Language experience shapes the gradual maturation of speech production in both native and second languages. Structural aspects like the connectedness of spontaneous narratives reveal this maturation progress in L1 acquisition and, as it does not rely on semantics, it could also reveal structural pattern changes during L2 acquisition. The current study tested whether L2 lexical retrieval associated with vocabulary knowledge could impact the global connectedness of narratives during the initial stages of L2 acquisition. Specifically, the study evaluated the relationship between (...) graph structure and L2 learners’ oral production in the L2 and L1. Seventy-nine college-aged students who were native speakers of English and had received classroom instruction in either L2-Spanish or L2-Chinese participated in this study. Three tasks were used: semantic fluency, phonemic fluency and picture description. Measures were operationalized as the number of words per minute in the case of the semantic and phonemic fluency tasks. Graph analysis was carried out for the picture description task using the computational tool SpeechGraphs to calculate connectedness. Results revealed significant positive correlations between connectedness in the picture description task and measures of speech production in the phonemic and semantic fluency tasks. These correlations were only significant for the participants’ L2- Spanish and Chinese. Results indicate that producing low connectedness narratives in L2 may be a marker of the initial stages of L2 oral development. These findings are consistent with the pattern reported in the early stages of L1 literacy. Future studies should further explore the interactions between graph structure and second language production proficiency, including more advanced stages of L2 learning and considering the role of cognitive abilities in this process. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, contrary to Chad Hansen’s view , that pre-Han 漢 Chinese philosophy has the semantic concept of truth. Hansen argues that, first, pre-Han Chinese thinkers do not have motivations to introduce the concept of truth in their philosophy due to their peculiar theory of language; second, the concept does not fit well with philosophical texts at that time, and in particular, the Mozi 墨子 text about the three standards of doctrine. However, I argue that (...) Chinese thinkers indeed have reasons to introduce the concept of truth. Hansen’s reading of the three standards of doctrine takes the standards as standards of correct word use, thus attributing to the authors of the Mozi an understanding of yan 言 as something without complete propositional content. However, I argue, a reading that sees the three standards as standards for something with complete propositional content explains better the passages in which the authors apply the standards to various issues. Finally I argue that the term ran 然 is sometimes used as a truth predicate in classical Chinese texts, because it has several important features identical to that of the truth predicate “is true” in English. (shrink)

Upon completing Marthe Atwater Chandler's Expressing the Heart's Intent: Explorations in Chinese Aesthetics I am struck by how much can be gleaned retroactively from the title. At the outset the title indeed made me somewhat wary, having seen how on many occasions Chinese philosophical terms become mangled in English-language translation in ways that unnecessarily import, either implicitly or explicitly, misleading conceptual frameworks. Words like "expressing," "heart," and "intent" all triggered various suspicions on my part. Fortunately, these (...) suspicions were quickly addressed, as Chandler advances an adept reading of the shi yan zhi 詩言志 conceit so central to Chinese aesthetics since its introduction in the... (shrink)

This study investigated the relative role of sub-syllabic components in spoken word recognition of Mandarin Chinese using an eye-tracking experiment with a visual world paradigm. Native Mandarin speakers were presented with four pictures and an auditory stimulus. They were required to click the picture according to the sound stimulus they heard, and their eye movements were tracked during this process. For a target word, nine conditions of competitors were constructed in terms of the amount of their phonological overlap with (...) the target: consonant competitor, rime competitor, tone competitor, consonant plus rime competitor, consonant plus tone competitor, rime plus tone competitor, cohort competitor, cohort plus tone competitor, and baseline competitor. A growth curve analysis was conducted with the fixation to competitors, targets, and distractors, and the results showed that competitors with consonant or rime overlap can be adequately activated, while tone overlap plays a weaker role since additional tonal information can strengthen the competitive effect only when it was added to a candidate that already bears much phonological similarity with the target. Mandarin words are processed in an incremental way in the time course of word recognition since different partially overlapping competitors could be activated immediately; like the pattern found in English, both cohort and rime competitors were activated to compete for lexical activation, but these two competitors were not temporally distinctive and mainly differed in the size of their competitive effects. Generally, the gradation of activation based on the phonological similarity between target and candidates found in this study was in line with the continuous mapping models and may reflect a strategy of native speakers shaped by the informative characteristics of the interaction among different sub-syllabic components. (shrink)

Previous work has shown that English native speakers interpret sentences as predicted by a noisy‐channel model: They integrate both the real‐world plausibility of the meaning—the prior—and the likelihood that the intended sentence may be corrupted into the perceived sentence. In this study, we test the noisy‐channel model in Mandarin Chinese, a language taxonomically different from English. We present native Mandarin speakers sentences in a written modality (Experiment 1) and an auditory modality (Experiment 2) in three pairs of (...) syntactic alternations. The critical materials are literally implausible but require differing numbers and types of edits in order to form more plausible sentences. Each sentence is followed by a comprehension question that allows us to infer whether the speakers interpreted the item literally, or made an inference toward a more likely meaning. Similar to previous research on related English constructions, Mandarin participants made the most inferences for implausible materials that could be inferred as plausible by deleting a single morpheme or inserting a single morpheme. Participants were less likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a preposition. And participants were least likely to infer a plausible meaning for materials that could be inferred as plausible by making an exchange across a main verb. Moreover, we found more inferences in written materials than spoken materials, possibly a result of a lack of word boundaries in written Chinese. Overall, the fact that the results were so similar to those found in related constructions in English suggests that the noisy‐channel proposal is robust. (shrink)

Second language listening is a common challenge for language learners. It remains largely unknown how bilinguals process L2 listening. The literature has suggested an interactive model of L2 listening processing. However, few studies have examined the model from an experimental approach. The current study tried to provide empirical evidence for the interactive model of L2 listening processing in bilinguals by exploring the relationships among English spoken word segmentation, cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and L2 listening proficiency. The results showed positive (...) associations among SWS, cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and L2 listening proficiency. Mediation analysis suggested that SWS might have a positive influence on L2 listening proficiency both directly and indirectly through cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility, respectively. These results imply that both bottom-up and top-down processes are engaged in bilinguals’ L2 listening processing. (shrink)

Combining the communicative language competence model and the perspective of multimodal research, this research proposes a research framework for oral communicative competence under the multimodal perspective. This not only truly reflects the language communicative competence but also fully embodies the various contents required for assessment in the basic attributes of spoken language. Aiming at the feature sparseness of the user evaluation matrix, this paper proposes a feature weight assignment algorithm based on the English spoken category keyword dictionary and user (...) search records. The algorithm is mainly based on the self-built English oral category classification dictionary and converts the user’s query vector into a user-English-speaking type vector. Through the calculation rules proposed in this paper, the target user’s preference score for a specific type of spoken English is obtained, and this score is assigned to the unrated item of the original user’s feature matrix as the initial starting score. At the same time, in order to solve the problem of insufficient user similarity calculation accuracy, a user similarity calculation algorithm based on “Synonyms Cilin Extended Edition” and search records is proposed. The algorithm introduces “Synonyms Cilin” to calculate the correlation between the semantic items, vocabulary, and query vector in the user query record to obtain the similarity between users and finally gives a user similarity calculation that integrates user ratings and query vectors method. For the task of Chinese grammar error correction, this article uses two methods of predicting the relationship between words in the corpus, Word2Vec and GloVe, to train the word vectors of different dimensions and use the word vectors to represent the text features of the experimental samples, avoiding sentences brought by word segmentation. On the basis of word vectors, the advantages and disadvantages of CNN, LSTM, and SVM models in this shared task are analyzed through experimental data. The comparative experiment shows that the method in this paper has achieved relatively good results. (shrink)

Emerging evidence has shown a positive association between the home literacy environment and monolingual children’s language and literacy development. Yet, far fewer studies have examined the impact of the HLE on second language development. This study examined relations between the HLE and children’s development of English as a second language in Hong Kong. Participants were 149 ethnic Chinese children and one of their caregivers. Caregivers completed questionnaires about their family backgrounds and HLE and children were assessed on their (...) English language and literacy skills. Findings revealed considerable variability in the types of literacy activities that caregivers were engaged in at home with their children. A series of multilevel regressions demonstrated that the HLE was differentially associated with English vocabulary, letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and word reading skills after controlling for child and family characteristics. Results highlight the importance of a literacy-rich home environment for children’s development of English as a second language and the need to support caregivers in providing a range of home literacy activities to facilitate different language and literacy skills. (shrink)

Previous studies have found the effect of cognitive skills on reading ability, but the role of different reading-related skills in acquisition of Chinese as a second/foreign language remains unexplored. Prior meta-analyses on the relationship between cognitive skills and reading have been conducted primarily in native English-speaking or Mandarin-speaking children. The purpose of the present meta-analysis was to examine the relationship between Chinese reading-related skills and Chinese word reading of CSL/CFL learners. A search of English and (...) Chinese databases yielded 42 effect sizes, comprising 1103 subjects met the criteria for meta-analysis and were included in the final meta-analysis. Results revealed a moderate relationship between phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic awareness, rapid automatized naming and Chinese word reading in CSL/CFL learners. In addition, a moderating effect of length of study on the relationship between phonological awareness and Chinese word reading : phonological awareness and Chinese word reading correlated more strongly for beginning learners than for advanced learners. These results suggest importance of cognitive factors in the acquisition of Chinese word reading as a second language. Results also shed light on the impact of length of study on the influence from phonological awareness to the sensitive period of phonological learning for CSL/CFL learners. (shrink)

The present study investigated the effects of L1-L2 congruency, collocation type, and restriction on L2 collocational processing. Advanced Chinese learners of English and native English-speaking controls performed an online acceptability judgment task to investigate how advanced L2 learners processed congruent (sharing the same meaning and structure in L1 language) collocations and English-only (not equivalent in L1 construction) collocations with the same node (right) word and a different collocate (left). The experimental materials included verb-noun (VN), adjective-noun (AN) (...) collocations, free (less fixed), and restricted (more fixed) collocations chosen from BNC. The results revealed that (i) The non-native speakers were sensitive to L1-L2 congruency, but the native speakers were not. (ii) The native speakers were sensitive to collocation restriction, whereas the non-native speakers were not. These results lend initial support to the mapping hypothesis and open choice principle of L2 collocational processing for Chinese English learners. (shrink)

The basic question of this article is: “What is understanding?” The objective is to initiate a process and a state of self-reflexivity which might best be defined as an understanding of understanding. In this self-referential philosophical setting, it cannot be our aim to attempt to produce any (alleged) final answers, because cognitive self-referentiality, taken as a source principle of mind, is without beginning and end. However, it is feasible to explore possibilities of a continuously increasing convergence and insight regarding the (...) objective. In addition, the basic question of an understanding of understanding is taken into consideration from a transcultural angle here. Direct samples of ancient Greek, later German as well as pre-modern Chinese philosophies are included in one systematic context here. The topic is developed in four basic steps. At first, a semantic and philosophical analysis of the English word “understanding” is developed in perspective of philo- sophical-anthropological thoughts by J. G. Herder, Aristotle, and the anthropo-cosmic foundations of the ancient Confucian classic Liji . In a second step, the meaning of “understanding” is analysed in the extended sense of a philosophical metaphor. Selective references are made to Kongzi , Martin Heidegger, Plato, and Zhuangzi . In a third step, the discussion of the semantics of the German philosophical terms “Verstehen” and “Verstand” is explored on the basis of the preceding reflections. In the fourth segment of this contribution, further references are made to the Daodejing and to a model of the structure of consciousness and understanding in the context of Wang Yangming’s philosophy. From various angles of different times and places, the problem of an understanding of understanding points to the most basic layers of human existence, personal experience, human cultures, and civilisations. (shrink)

This study examined L1 and L2 English speakers’ sensitivity to constructional meaning by investigating their categorization of Noun1 of Noun2 constructions (e.g., results of studies) and argument structure constructions (e.g., Tom cut the bread). Participants were 40 L1 English speakers and 44 intermediate proficiency Chinese-speaking learners of L2 English, who completed two online sorting experiments. In each experiment, participants were instructed to (i) sort the stimuli according to their overall meaning and (ii) provide explanations for their (...) sorting decisions. Results showed that EFL users preferred construction-based sorting for the argument structure stimuli but not the Noun1 of Noun2 stimuli. However, L1 English speakers showed a preference toward word-based sorting for both construction types. Participants’ self-reported explanations for their sorts nonetheless indicated sensitivity to the constructional meanings of argument structure constructions and Noun1 of Noun2 constructions. Additionally, language users were found more likely to produce construction-based sorts with more time spent on the task. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese TextAerin CaleyHuang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Text. By Paul Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. ix + 520. $75.00.As a student in my final year of formal training in Zen Shiatsu, I am looking to my future. While I will (...) soon begin my practice, I also intend to continue my studies, particularly with respect to the history of Chinese and Japanese medicine. My biggest [End Page 130] challenge will be that I don't understand either of these languages, leaving me at the mercy of translators, in a field where meaning is often dependant on nuance.I was, therefore, very interested to read Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Text by Paul Unschuld. Although it is considered a seminal text, the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen is not a unified manual of medicine but the accumulation of writing and experience that predated its compilation. In his efforts to translate this book, Unschuld attempted to take into consideration the broad variety of influences that would affect its intent and meanings.The body of work that is known by this name underwent many revisions through the years, attaining the form we recognize today approximately twelve hundred years ago. Even working within the original language this presents several challenges. The first is that language and meanings change, and this sometimes obscures the intended connotation even for a scholar conversant in the original language. Unschuld also took into consideration the fact that the book had many editors, each working within a different social, political, and religious milieu. Medical knowledge grew with each generation, based on and referring to the writings of the time, many of which are no longer extant but are assumed to have been available to readers of the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen.If one were to postulate that this work was perfectly understood in Chinese, Unschuld would still face a challenge in his attempt to translate it into English. There are concepts in Chinese that have no equivalent in English and therefore present a challenge for someone trying to remain true to the original intent. He explains that this difficulty begins with the title itself, which is normally given as "The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Chinese Medicine." Although Huang Di is usually translated as Yellow Emperor, there are implications of the word emperor that are not part of huang, and, in fact, Unschuld prefers to leave the word untranslated, as there is no English option that does not alter the intent of the original.Like most important books, the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen cannot be fully grasped in one reading. I expect to revisit it many times throughout my life, as my experience in life and my practice leaven my understanding. I truly believe that texts such as Unschuld's will be an important part of my developing perception. Knowledge that is examined divorced from its formative circumstances loses the heart of its meaning, and Unschuld has made important progress in revealing the keys to the essence of the Su Wen.Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Text is a dense but fascinating read. Unschuld has done a good job of providing the information needed to be clear and thorough without getting bogged down in what are probably intriguing details. The layperson in Chinese history and textual analysis will likely find it occasionally rough going, but I found it an inspiration to learn more. Overall, I believe Paul Unschuld's work to shows him to be a worthy disciple of Wang Bing, one of the Su Wen's editors, who wrote: "I hope to elucidate the message of the sages and to make their mysterious sayings shine. They should resemble the stellar constellations hung up on high.... [T]hey should resemble the crystalclear water in a deep spring where scales and shells can be distinguished." [End Page 131]Copyright © 2005 University of Hawai'i Press... (shrink)

The Chan tradition is renowned as the “meditation” school of East Asia. Indeed, the Chinese term chan 禪 is an abbreviated transliteration of dhyāna, the Sanskrit term arguably closest to the modern English word “meditation.” Scholars typically date the emergence of this tradition to the early Tang dynasty , although Chan did not reach institutional maturity until the Song period . In time, Chinese Chan spread throughout East Asia, giving birth to the various Zen, Sŏn, and Thiền (...) lineages of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, respectively. Today these traditions continue to promote, at least in theory, meditation practices, and these have been the subject of considerable scholarly .. (shrink)