A Multi-Dimensional Exploration of Future Aspect Marker "Dai" in Chinese Dialect from the Perspective of Typology — Take Gansu Tianzhu Dialect as an Example

Objectives: In Tianzhu dialect, the use of the future aspect marker "Dai[tɛi44]" is frequent. The grammatical meaning of the future aspect marker, "verb phrase (VP) +'Dai[tɛi44]+[lio21]'", in Tianzhu dialect can be divided into two categories according to the differences of VP: one indicates that the end of the action is about to be reached, that is, "VP +'Dai1[tɛi44]+[lio21]'"; the other indicates that the action is about to begin, that is, "VP +‘Dai2[tɛi44]+[lio21]’ ". This article takes the Tianzhu dialect aspect marker "Dai[tɛi44]" as the main research object, and focuses on the grammatical functions and semantic features of "Dai1[tɛi44]" and "Dai2[tɛi44]" by studying the actionality types of verbs in Tianzhu dialect, and compares the future aspect marker "Dai[tɛi44]" in Tianzhu dialect with the future aspect markers of other Chinese dialect in Northwest China, and generalizes the geographical distribution and regional characteristics of the future aspect marker "Dai[tɛi44]".

Processing Aspectual Agreement in an Inflexionless Language: An ERP Study of Mandarin Chinese

This is a study of the collocation of Chinese verbs with different lexical aspects and aspect markers. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we explored the processing of aspect violation sentences. In the experiment, we combined verbs of various lexical aspect types with the progressive aspect marker zhe, and the combination of the achievement verbs and the progressive aspect marker zhe constituted the sentence’s aspect violation. The participants needed to judge whether a sentence was correct after it was presented. Finally, we observed and analyzed the components of ERPs. The results suggest that when the collocation of aspect markers and lexical aspect is ungrammatical, the N400-like and P600 are elicited on aspect markers, while the late AN is elicited by the word after the aspect marker. P600 and N400-like show that the collocation of Chinese verbs with various lexical aspects and aspect markers involve not only syntactic processing, but also the semantic processing; and the late AN may have been due to the syntax revision and the conclusion at the end of sentences.

The use of LE 了 in Mandarin Chinese oral discourse

LE is the mostly widely studied aspect markers in Chinese. In addition to perfective aspect marker to indicate action completion, LE can also serve as sentence final particle to indicate a currently relevant state. This study investigates how Chinese NSs use LE in oral discourse and the factors that influence their use. The data were collected from three discourses including informal conversations, elicited narratives, and teacher classroom speech. Multivariate analysis of 2,359 tokens revealed that verb complement type and verb type have the strongest effects, followed by LE position, serial verb relationship, sentence type, discourse context, and time word presence/absence.

Online processing of the grammatical aspect marker by L2 Chinese learners

The perfective aspect marker in Chinese is partly functionally similar to inflectional suffixes in Indo-European languages, but is non-inflectional and lexical in nature, lying thus at the semantics–syntax interface. This provides us with the opportunity to compare directly the syntactic and semantic constraints during second language (L2) sentence processing. The present study explored how L2 Chinese learners with Indo-European languages as their first languages (L1s) process the Chinese perfective marker. The Competition Model prioritizes syntactic processes entailed by cross-linguistic transfer from the participants’ L1s, but this prediction might be challenged by the concurrent functioning of semantic processes. In an event-related potentials (ERP) experiment, 22 European language-speaking L2 Chinese learners with low to intermediate proficiency level and 20 native Chinese speakers (i.e. the control group) participated. An aspectual agreement paradigm was used for materials. Results showed that in the aspect marker mismatch condition, L2 Chinese learners with a shorter learning experience were more likely to show a P600-like component, indicating a morpho-syntactic routine, supporting thus the predictions of cross-linguistic transfer based on the Competition Model. Those with a longer L2 learning experience were more likely to show a N400-like component similar to native Chinese speakers. This shift from P600 to N400 for more advanced learners suggest that L1–L2 syntactic similarity may exert much stronger influence than semantic constraints for learners with shorter L2 experience.

Does Enhanced Conversational Recast promote the learning of grammatical morphemes in Cantonese-speaking preschool children? Answers from a single-case experimental study

Enhanced Conversational Recast (ECR) is an input-based grammatical intervention approach developed from research on statistical learning. Recent research reported evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ECR on the learning of grammatically obligatory morphemes in English-speaking preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD). This single-case experimental design study, which adopted a within-participant design with single baseline and control item, investigated the efficacy of ECR in promoting the learning of aspect markers in four Cantonese-speaking typically-developing preschool children. Two children demonstrated positive outcomes with the progressive aspect marker ‘ gan2’ given 12 ECR training sessions within a mean dosage of 288. One of these children demonstrated statistically significant gains in the percentage of correct use in the probes. The lack of positive outcomes in the other two children on the earlier developing aspect marker ‘ zo2’ and limitations of the study were discussed. With early evidence established in the typically developing children in this study, future research on Cantonese speaking children with DLD can be considered.

Effects of Media Exposure on Regional Associations

Although there is a long-standing tradition discounting the effect of media exposure on language variation, this study shows how televised media formulate and reinforce the sociosemiotic links between linguistic features and their regional associations. The Mandarin aspect marker you is an interesting case in this regard, as it is semiotically linked mostly, if not exclusively, to Taiwanese Mandarin by many Chinese mainlanders, even though the feature is, in fact, also observed in many southern Mandarin varieties on the mainland. Drawing upon Agha’s concept of enregisterment, the goals of this study are 1) to provide empirical evidence of the semiotic work that media do to language, and 2) to test whether exposure to Taiwanese televised media contributes to the mismatch between the regional association and actual geographical distribution of the aspect marker you. The findings of this study suggest two levels of media influence: meta-awareness and indexicality. The relationships between these two levels are incremental and mutually constitutive, and televised media play the role of catalyzing these reciprocal processes.

Why jumped is so difficult: tense/aspect marking in Mandarin–English bilingual children

Learning to mark for tense in a second language is notoriously difficult for speakers of a tenseless language like Chinese. In this study we test two reasons for these difficulties in Chinese–English sequential bilingual children: (1) morphophonological transfer (i.e., avoidance of complex codas), and (2) interpretation of –ed as an aspect marker of completion, like the Mandarin –le. Mandarin–English bilingual children and age-matched monolinguals did a cartoon retell task. The verbs used in the stories were coded for accuracy in English, telicity, and suppliance of –ed or –le. The results were consistent with morphophonological transfer: the bilingual children were more accurate with irregular past forms in English than regular forms. The results were also consistent with the bilingual children's interpretation of –ed as an aspect marker: most of their production of –ed was on telic verbs. We discuss possible reasons for the children's interpretation of –ed as an aspect marker.

The Possibility of Weak V-DE-(NP)-A Constructions in Chinese

According to Washio’s (1997) strong and weak resultative analysis, Chinese resultative V-A-(NP) compounds allow both strong and weak resultative constructions while Chinese V-DE-(NP)-A constructions allow only strong resultative constructions, i.e., weak V-DE-(NP)-A constructions are not accepted in these constructions when the result predicate is a stage-level predicate + le. However, it can be found that these ungrammatical weak V-DE-(NP)-A constructions are possible to be grammatical in Chinese when the result predicate is an individual-level predicate or is modified by a degree word. A natural question to ask here is why so. In the paper, I will suggest a reason for it in terms of the function of DE and the aspect marker le in Chinese resultative constructions and the syntactic structures of V-DE-(NP)-A constructions.