Insight into the structure of compound words among speakers of Chinese and English

ABSTRACTKnowledge of compound word structures in Chinese and English was investigated, comparing 435 Chinese and 258 Americans, including second, fourth, and sixth graders, and college undergraduates. As anticipated, the results revealed that Chinese speakers performed better on a word structure analogy task than their English-speaking counterparts. Also, as anticipated, speakers of both languages performed better on noun + noun and verb + particle compounds, which are more productive in their respective languages than noun + verb and verb + noun compounds, which are less productive. Both Chinese and English speakers performed significantly better on novel compounds than on familiar compounds, most likely because familiar compounds are lexicalized and do not invite decomposition into constituents.

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Do Chinese- and English-speaking preschoolers think differently about language?

First Language ◽

10.1177/0142723716673956 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 36 (6) ◽

pp. 617-636 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Yao Guan ◽

M. Jeffrey Farrar

Keyword(s):

Inhibitory Control ◽

Critical Role ◽

Receptive Vocabulary ◽

English Speakers ◽

Metalinguistic Awareness ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Language Groups ◽

Rhyme Awareness ◽

English Speaking ◽

Chinese And English

Metalinguistic awareness is the ability to identify, reflect upon, and manipulate linguistic units. It plays a critical role in reading development. The present study investigated Chinese- and English-speaking preschoolers’ metalinguistic awareness development and the role of cognitive and linguistic abilities in its development. Forty-two Chinese-speaking and 36 English-speaking monolingual children completed a series of metalinguistic awareness, false belief, inhibitory control, and receptive vocabulary tasks. The results revealed distinct pathways for the two language groups. English speakers had a more advanced level of rhyme awareness. Chinese speakers developed homonym understanding faster during the preschool years. Inhibitory control was more important for Chinese speakers to develop synonym and homonym understanding, whereas receptive vocabulary was crucial for English speakers to develop rhyme awareness. These differences may be attributable to the characteristics of the Chinese and English languages, as well as the patterns of cognitive development in the two populations.

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Intercultural pragmatics at work: (Self-)perceptions of intercultural behavior of Chinese and English speakers and interpreters in healthcare interactions

Intercultural Pragmatics ◽

10.1515/ip-2015-0004 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Jim Hlavac ◽

Zhichang Xu ◽

David Xiong Yong

Keyword(s):

The Self ◽

English Speakers ◽

Cultural Groups ◽

Theoretical Frameworks ◽

Patient Centered ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Intercultural Pragmatics ◽

Linguistic Behavior ◽

Healthcare Situation ◽

Chinese And English

AbstractInterpreters are expected to have an advanced command of not only the vocabulary and grammar of their working languages, but also the pragmatic norms that speakers of their working languages employ in communicative interactions. The aim of this paper is to explore the perceptions and practices of interpreters in relation to intercultural pragmatics at work in healthcare interactions. The paper employs two theoretical frameworks: the first is based on interpretations of behavior according to speakers' discourse-pragmatic features as representative of “high” or “low” context cultures (cf. Hall 1976); the second applies Celce-Murcia's (2007) more refined notion of “communicative competence.” The data sample of this paper focuses on cultural-pragmatic features of two linguistic and cultural groups – 25 Chinese speakers and 24 English speakers – and contrasts their selected responses to five features of Chinese-English interpreted healthcare interactions. Responses from 33 Chinese-English interpreters are matched against those from speakers of the two groups to examine the degree of congruence that interpreters have with the self-reported (para-)linguistic behavior of the two groups of speakers, for whom they interpret. This study shows that the self-reported (para-)linguistic behavior of both groups is determined by their adoption of a particular approach (doctor- vs. patient-centered approach) and other micro-level features (perceived time constraints, different notions of “small talk”) that limit elaborate pragmatic enactments. Over-arching cultural-pragmatic models based on “high” (or “low”) context communication, or “vertical” (vs. “horizontal”) hierarchical perceptions of role and status appear to have limited application to the data. Instead, local features specific to the healthcare situation co-determine both English and Chinese speakers' responses to questions about their use of pragmatics. Findings indicate that interpreters attend to each group's enactment of pragmatic features and, as expert language users, are able to recognize features and components of interactions and their functions to a greater degree than the Chinese and English speakers.

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ASYMMETRY OF NULL SUBJECTS AND NULL OBJECTS IN CHINESE SPEAKERS' L2 ENGLISH

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s0272263197004038 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 467-497 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Boping Yuan

Keyword(s):

Null Subjects ◽

L2 Acquisition ◽

Null Subject ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Null Objects ◽

Null Object ◽

Chinese Learners ◽

English Speaking ◽

L1 Acquisition ◽

Chinese And English

One of the differences between Chinese and English is that the former allows both null subjects in finite sentences and null objects, but the latter allows neither. This cross-linguistic variation is believed to be related to the underspecification of I and topic drop in Chinese but not in English. This paper reports on an empirical study investigating the unlearning of null subjects and null objects by 159 Chinese learners in their L2 acquisition of English. In L1 acquisition, it has been found that English-speaking children display an asymmetry by frequently allowing null subjects but rarely null objects. The results of this study indicate that there is an asymmetry in Chinese learners' L2 English, which, however, is opposite to that found in English L1 acquisition: Chinese learners are able to reject the incorrect null subject in English, but unable to detect the ungrammaticality of the null object. It is proposed that the unlearning of null subjects by Chinese learners of English is triggered by the evidence in their input indicating the specification of AGR(eement) and T(ense) in English, and that the difficulty in the unlearning of null objects is related to the lack of informative evidence to unset the [+ topic-drop] setting in Chinese learners' L2 English.

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Evidence Against Linguistic Relativity in Chinese and English: A Case Study of Spatial and Temporal Metaphors

Journal of Cognition and Culture ◽

10.1163/156853708x358218 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 8 (3-4) ◽

pp. 335-357 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Chi-Shing Tse ◽

Jeanette Altarriba

Keyword(s):

Linguistic Relativity ◽

English Speakers ◽

Current Experiment ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Spatial Metaphors ◽

Reverse Pattern ◽

Chinese And English

AbstractTo talk about time, English speakers often use horizontal spatial metaphors whereas Chinese speakers use both vertical and horizontal spatial metaphors. Boroditsky (2001) showed that while Chinese-English bilinguals were faster to verify a temporal target like June comes earlier than August after they had seen a vertical spatial prime rather than a horizontal spatial prime, English monolinguals showed the reverse pattern, thus supporting the linguistic relativity hypothesis. This finding was not conceptually replicated in January and Kako's (2007) six experiments for English monolinguals. In the current experiment, we failed to conceptually replicate her English monolinguals' findings: both Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals were faster to verify the sentences after seeing a vertical spatial prime than a horizontal spatial prime. While we replicated Boroditsky's findings, in part, for our Chinese-English bilinguals, the similarity in the pattern of findings for both Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals argues against the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

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English and Chinese children’s motion event similarity judgments

Cognitive Linguistics ◽

10.1515/cog-2016-0151 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 45-76 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Yinglin Ji ◽

Jill Hohenstein

Keyword(s):

Visual Motion ◽

English Speakers ◽

Older Children ◽

Native Languages ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Match To Sample ◽

Language And Thought ◽

Motion Event ◽

English Speaking ◽

Similarity Judgments

AbstractThis study explores the relationship between language and thought in similarity judgments by testing how monolingual children who speak languages with partial typological differences in motion description (English and Chinese) respond to visual motion event stimuli. Participants were either Chinese- or English-speaking, 3-year-olds, 8-year-olds and adults (32 in each group) who judged the similarity between caused motion scenes in a match-to-sample task. The results suggest, first of all, that the two younger groups of 3-year-olds are predominantly path-oriented, irrespective of language, as evidenced by their significantly longer fixation on path-match videos rather than manner-match videos in a preferential looking scheme. Using categorical measurement of overt choices, older children and adults also showed a shared tendency of being more path-oriented. However, the analysis using continuous measurement of reaction time revealed significant variations in spatial cognition that can be related to linguistic differences: English speakers tended to be more manner-oriented while Chinese speakers were equally manner- and path-oriented. On the whole, our findings indicate a likelihood that children’s non-linguistic thought is similar prior to internalising the lexicalisation pattern of motion events in their native languages, but shows divergences after such habitual use, thus suggesting that the pattern of non-linguistic thought may be linked, among other things, to linguistic structure.

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Linguistically directed attention to the temporal aspect of action events in monolingual English speakers and Chinese–English bilingual speakers with varying English proficiency

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728911000320 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 413-421 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

JENN-YEU CHEN ◽

JUI-JU SU ◽

CHAO-YANG LEE ◽

PADRAIG G. O'SEAGHDHA

Keyword(s):

English Proficiency ◽

Linguistic Relativity ◽

Matching Task ◽

English Speakers ◽

Directed Attention ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Bilingual Speakers ◽

English Bilingual ◽

Temporal Aspect ◽

Chinese And English

Chinese and English speakers seem to hold different conceptions of time which may be related to the different codings of time in the two languages. Employing a sentence–picture matching task, we have investigated this linguistic relativity in Chinese–English bilinguals varying in English proficiency and found that those with high proficiency performed differently from those with low proficiency. Additional monolingual English data, reported here, showed further that high-proficiency bilinguals performed similarly to the English monolinguals, suggesting that Chinese speakers’ sensitivity to the time of an action event might be modifiable according to the extent of their experience with a tensed language.

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The morphosyntactic structure of compound words influences parafoveal processing in Chinese reading

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1080/17470218.2017.1307426 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (1) ◽

pp. 190-197 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Denis Drieghe ◽

Lei Cui ◽

Guoli Yan ◽

Xuejun Bai ◽

Hui Chi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Target Word ◽

Eye Movement ◽

Compound Word ◽

Preview Benefit ◽

Chinese Reading ◽

Compound Words ◽

Parafoveal Processing ◽

Parafoveal Preview ◽

Noun Compounds ◽

Boundary Paradigm

In an eye movement experiment employing the boundary paradigm, we compared parafoveal preview benefit during the reading of Chinese sentences. The target word was a two-character compound that had either a noun–noun or an adjective–noun structure each sharing an identical noun as the second character. The boundary was located between the two characters of the compound word. Prior to the eyes crossing the boundary, the preview of the second character was presented either normally or was replaced by a pseudocharacter. Previously, Juhasz, Inhoff, and Rayner observed that inserting a space into a normally unspaced compound in English significantly disrupted processing and that this disruption was larger for adjective–noun compounds than for noun–noun compounds. This finding supports the hypothesis that, at least in English, for adjective–noun compounds, the noun is more important for lexical identification than the adjective, while for noun–noun compounds, both constituents are similar in importance for lexical identification. Our results indicate a similar division of the importance of compounds in reading in Chinese as the pseudocharacter preview was more disruptive for the adjective–noun compounds than for the noun–noun compounds. These findings also indicate that parafoveal processing can be influenced by the morphosyntactic structure of the currently fixated character.

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Investigating Responses to Compliments by Brazilian Portuguese Speaking EFL Learners: A Contrastive Analysis

Advances in Language and Literary Studies ◽

10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.1p.215 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 215

Author(s):

Marisa De Lima Zanella

Keyword(s):

Private School ◽

American English ◽

Brazilian Portuguese ◽

English Speakers ◽

Efl Learners ◽

Chinese Speakers ◽

Politeness Strategies ◽

Brazilian Students ◽

American English Speakers ◽

Insight Into

This paper reports a study on politeness strategies of Brazilian Portuguese speakers and American English speakers regarding their responses to compliments. The aim of this research is to gain an insight into the politeness characteristics of Brazilian Portuguese speakers by analyzing how Brazilian students react when receiving compliments. It also aims to investigate how politeness from Brazilian Portuguese speakers differs from politeness of American English speakers when receiving compliments. The population for this research consists of 12 students with intermediate and upper-intermediate levels of EFL from the Cooperative de Trabalho Magna, a private school in Brazil. The study followed a descriptive and interpretive qualitative research method, where 133 answers were analyzed and then contrasted with Chen’s (1993) study of politeness strategies between American English and Chinese speakers. This study shows that, unlike American English speakers, Brazilian Portuguese speakers need to justify and give reasons for the compliment received.

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