Foreign Language Effect on Dishonesty

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the use of foreign languages affects individuals’ dishonesty. We recruited native Chinese speakers who can speak English as a foreign language at universities in China, and they were randomly assigned to a native language (NL) or foreign language (FL) condition. Participants in each condition were required to finish the same tasks, in which they would benefit more from lying; the tasks were administered in either Chinese or English. We conducted one die-roll game in Study 1 and one cheap-talk sender-receiver game in Study 2. In both Study 1 and Study 2, we found that the proportion of lying was significantly lower in the FL condition than in the NL condition. Our results imply that the FL effect on dishonesty may be due to the cognitive load of communicating in a FL.

A Study of the Vowel Context Effect on Initial Stops of Mandarin Produced by Native and Nonnative Speakers

This study, based on corpus materials, investigates the “voice onset time” (VOT) of Mandarin word-initial stops in isolated syllables according to the effect of vowel contexts produced by native and nonnative speakers. Here, 1250 monosyllables of word-initial plosives /p/, /t/, /k/, /p[Formula: see text]/, /t[Formula: see text]/, and /k[Formula: see text]/ were uttered in combination with the vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ in four tone contexts except /ki/ and /k[Formula: see text]i/ that are phonetically illegal in Mandarin by 20 participants (10 native Chinese speakers and 10 Urdu learners of Chinese). Results show that for native Chinese speakers, the VOTs of aspirated stops followed by the high vowels /i/ and /u/ are significantly longer than those followed by the low vowel /a/, and unaspirated stops followed only by the high back vowel /u/ are significantly longer than those followed by the low vowel /a/. For native Urdu speakers, the mean VOTs of word-initial stops in Mandarin monosyllables have no significant effect for both aspirated and unaspirated ones in combination with different vowels. Understanding the results of this study will be of assistance to second language learning and teaching.

Specific Features of Lettered Words’ Integration in the Graphic, Phonetic and Grammatical Aspects of the Chinese Language

This paper is devoted to the specific features of lettered words' integration in the graphic, phonetic and grammatical aspects of the Chinese language. The author has analyzed a number of local and foreign studies, covering the main patterns of the lettered words' integration. Based on Liu Yongquan's studies, it was concluded that it's important to strictly follow letters' case. The case difference can distinguish semantics of different lettered words. Native Chinese speakers with high linguistic competence are able to recognize various lettered words in print, but they may not know how to read them out loud. Therefore, the pronunciation of lettered words is associated with a number of issues: the choice of pronunciation standard, the differentiation of initialisms and acronyms, the choice which syllable to stress. Based on the results of previous research, different ways of how borrowed lettered words respond to the grammatical norms of the Chinese language were identified. The empirical analysis was performed with lettered words extracted by the method of continuous sampling from lexicographic sources. Using the cases described in the paper, the author has proved that in addition to such word-formation processes as compounding, semi-affixation, syntactic and morphological transposition, lettered words can also be formed and transformed with morphological contraction.

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.

Coarticulation effects of contour tones in second language Chinese

This study tests for evidence of tonal coarticulation effects, especially anticipatory effects, in production of non-native Chinese contour tones. Eighty second language learners of Chinese and ten native speakers participated in a main experiment and two supplementary experiments in which they produced both real and pseudo disyllabic words. Findings indicate that anticipatory coarticulation is relevant in L2 contour tone production. L2 speakers’ Tone 2 and to some extent Tone 4 tend to be less intelligible to native listeners when followed by tones starting with a high onset (Tone 1 or Tone 4) due to anticipatory coarticulation. Some similar and different tonal coarticulation effects between native Chinese speakers and second language learners of Chinese are also noted in the paper based on the experiment results. This study argues that a ‘universal’ coarticulatory constraint plays a role in shaping second language Chinese tone phonology.