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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Chinese language acquisition'
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Hsu, Chun-chieh Natalie. "Issues in head-final relative clauses in Chinese derivation, processing, and acquisition /." Access to citation, abstract and download form provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company; downloadable PDF file 3.01 Mb., 371 p, 2006. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3220735.
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Mak, David Lai-woon. "The acquisition to classifiers in Cantonese." Online version, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.293547.
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Ma, Lixia. "Acquisition of the perfective aspect marker "le" of Mandarin Chinese in discourse by American college learners." Diss., University of Iowa, 2006. http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/68.
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Zhu, Bo. "Chinese Cultural Values And Chinese Language Pedagogy." The Ohio State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1228349636.
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Hsieh, Fang-Yen. "Relative clause acquisition in second language Chinese and second language English." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709395.
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Cheng, Chun-ming. "The connectionism approach to syntactic and semantic acquisition of simple Chinese sentences the role of word order information /." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2000. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B23272934.
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Wang, Xiaojun. "Chinese syntactic systems and second language acquisition: Approaches to the teaching of Chinese as a second language." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/187340.
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The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the relation between the teaching of Chinese syntax and the acquisition process by adult learners based on multitheoretical and multimethodological approaches. Through a brief review of the features of Chinese syntax and a comparative study of three different syntactic analytic systems, a Chinese linguistic background is provided. A further study of pedagogical Chinese syntax was conducted by investigating the teaching materials and methods introduced in three commonly used Chinese textbooks. Based on the Chinese linguistic and pedagogical background, the surveys were designed to probe the learners' acquisition process of Chinese syntax. The studies involved a total of 73 subjects who are native English speakers learning Chinese at different universities. It has been found that: (1) adult learners' acquisition order and rate are closely related to their cognitive skills; (2) the scope of acquisition in adults is subject to time limitations; (3) analysis & analogy are the main methods used by adult learners in the acquisition of syntax; (4) the learning environment & the knowledge of the target syntax by adult learners are not required to be situationally linked; (5) the process of syntactic transfer is incomplete among adult learners due to the lack of target language input; (6) the general failure rate in L2 acquisition partially associates with the lack of the fully functional innate language faculty; (7) the adult learners' common mistakes in syntactic acquisition process are predictable due to syntactic transfer and the influences from L1; (8) different teaching methods result in different strengths in students; (9) there is a gap between grammatical competence & communicative competence in the adult learners' acquisition process. According to those features, I proposed nine pedagogical principles for the Chinese syntax teaching, and a case study of teaching Chinese structures with three post-verbal complements was conducted in order to have a field-test. The discussion in this dissertation has partially confirmed the claim made by psycho-linguistic researchers that learning a second language is a complex process. There is a hierarchical order in acquiring language competence, and the acquisition of hierarchically ordered skills requires integrated approaches.
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Mai, Ziyin. "Properties of the (shi)...de focus construction in adult L2 acquisition and heritage language acquisition of mandarin Chinese." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.607706.
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Siok, Wai-ting. "The role of phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in Chinese reading acquisition." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 2001. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B23294516.
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Dai, Ruyi. "Second language acquisition and processing of Chinese 'bei' passives." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/288880.
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This doctoral dissertation reports on an empirical study, which takes a feature-based approach and probes the L2 acquisition and processing of Chinese bei passives by adult English native speakers. In Chinese, an individual passive marker bei is used to mark passive constructions. Whilst historically used as a lexical verb, bei is in the process of being grammaticalised (i.e. semi-lexical) and hence contains a semantic component (Liu, 2012a). Three forms of bei passives and their semantic properties have been investigated: basic long bei passives (i.e. with an external argument), basic short bei passives (i.e. without an external argument), and the retained-object construction of bei. In total, 75 English native speakers with intermediate and advanced Chinese proficiency, and 33 native Mandarin Chinese speakers (serving as a control group) were tested by a series of on-line methods (a self-paced reading task and a reaction-time picture elicited word rearrangement task) and off-line methods (an untimed acceptability judgement task and a fill-in-the-blank task). The current study finds that the reconfiguration of target semantic features of bei is a gradual process and occurs feature-by-feature, depending on consistent and ample input-based evidence. This lends support to the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2005, 2008, 2009). It is also found that morphosyntax-semantics mismatches lead to acquisitional difficulties, as predicted by the Bottleneck Hypothesis (Slabakova, 2008, 2009b), which shares a similar view to the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis. In addition, L1 English L2 Chinese learners are found to be subject to the formation strategy of English short passives, in line with Montrul (2001). A disjunction in L2 performance between off-line and on-line tasks has been found in the advanced learners, who show target-like on-line sensitivity to violations of semantic constraints on bei but fail to converge on the target grammar in off-line judgements. These findings are compatible with Ullman's (2001, 2005) declarative-procedural model and suggest that the increase in convergence on real-time comprehension and production in the advanced learners is a result of the more involved procedural system. The general findings of the current study lend support to the view (Sorace, 2009; White, 2011) that representational and processing difficulties must be teased apart in L2 acquisition.
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Paul, Michael A. "Chinese Foreign Language Attrition: Investigating Aspect Marker Usage." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194292.
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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect that rote memorization has on language attrition. More specifically, the loss of grammatical aspect markers is investigated. This study measures the general language attrition of a memorized narrative and an open-ended narrative between time one (T1) and time two (T2) measurements. Attrition of the memorized narrative at T2 is compared to how well the subject had it memorized it at T1. The attrition of aspect is then investigated in both the memorized narratives and open-ended narratives. Aspect marker attrition in the memorized narratives is also compared to how well the subject originally had the narrative memorized at T1. Aspect attrition is then compared between the memorized and open-ended narratives to see the effect of memorization on aspect attrition. Lastly, a qualitative investigation examines the effect of telicity on correct and incorrect aspect marking. This study reveals that learners of Chinese who spend time in a Chinese-speaking environment and gain a fairly high level of oral proficiency retain much of their oral production abilities over a 12-year period. Additionally, subjects are able to retain and use syntax and lexicon from narratives they had previously memorized as beginning-level learners. However, significant levels of content and length attrition occur for both types of narratives. Aspect marker -LE is used the most frequently, but it also has the highest percentage rate of error. Other aspect markers are used less frequently, and have lower percentage rates of error. Attrition in type, variety, and usage of aspect markers is significant between T1 and T2. There is not a significant relationship between how well the subjects produced the memorized narrative at T1 and either their performance at T2 or the attrition of aspect markers in either narrative. The subjects tend to mark telic verbs for perfective aspect more frequently and correctly than atelic verbs. Pedagogical implications of this study include suggestions for teaching perfective aspect as well as designing curriculum for students who are re-learning Chinese. Finally, the author invites further attrition research focusing on the effect of memorization on fluency variables.
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Lu, Yuan. "The acquisition of Chinese connectives by second language learners." Diss., University of Iowa, 2017. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5560.
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This study investigates the acquisition of Chinese connectives by second language learners under the theoretical framework of usage-based theory. Language is not a random set of words and phrases, but rather a coherent and cohesive set of utterances. As such, learning a second language (L2) entails, among other processes, learners’ development of employing cohesive devices to construct a coherent discourse in their target language. One type of cohesive devices frequently used by L2 learners is connectives. In Chinese, connectives are utilized to denote various semantic relationships between the clauses in a compound sentence. Due to their flexibility and complexity in nature, Chinese connectives present a huge challenge to L2 learners’ learning. However, to date no study has been set up to explore the learners’ development of Chinese connectives within L2 Chinese research community.
This study aims to fill this gap in the literature and build an L2 acquisitional model of Chinese connectives under the theoretical framework of Constructionist Usage-based Theory. Constructionist Usage-based Theory maintains that the basic unit of language is constructions and that the syntactic and lexical form of constructions and its corresponding semantic and discourse functions are conventionalized in language usage. According to these notions, language learning is believed to be driven by the factors grounded in the form and function of constructions in language usage. This study specifically examines how the factors of frequency, form, function, contingency (interaction of form and function), and L1-tuned attention affect L2 Chinese learners’ development of Chinese connectives. Furthermore, the study investigates the learners’ knowledge about the distribution of Chinese connectives across different proficiency levels.
Specifically, this study aims to address four research questions: (1) what is the relationship between L2 learners’ proficiency level and language background and the acquisition of Chinese connectives?; (2) do L2 learners overuse or underuse Chinese connectives in constructing responses when the other in a pair is given and what errors do L2 learners make when using Chinese connectives?; (3) how can 12 target pairs of Chinese connectives be categorized into (hierarchical) groups based on L2 Chinese learners’ performance?; and (4) how do theoretically-motivated models represent the factorial structure underlying L2 acquisition of Chinese connectives?
To address the four research questions, this study elicited L2 Chinese learners’ performance in two tests: a mini-discourse completion test and a form-function association test. In the mini-discourse completion test, learners were required to supply a missing clause to complete a three-clause discourse in which one of paired connectives was embedded; in the form-function association test, learners were asked to choose options of paired connectives to link two given clauses where connectives were omitted.
Results showed that the development of all Chinese paired connectives was positively correlated to L2 learners’ L2 proficiency level. Learners with heritage language background seemed to have an advantage over less frequent and less prototypical connectives. Predominantly, L2 learners underused Chinese connectives, resulting from the cross-linguistic influence of disparity between English and Chinese connectives at the structural level in particular and between English and Chinese textual cohesion at the discourse level in general. Based on L2 learners’ performances in the two tests, the 12 pairs of Chinese connectives were classifier into four hierarchical groups. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the usage-based factors (i.e., frequency, co-occurrence strength, formulaicity, prototypicality, contingency, and L1-tuned attention) jointly determined the L2 acquisition and development of Chinese connectives in a complex, adaptive, dynamic manner. Summarizing these findings, this study proposed a usage-based acquisitional model of L2 Chinese connectives, providing theoretical contributions to the usage-based theory and pedagogical implications for Chinese connectives.
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Yu, Xiao Ping. "Chinese Character Challenger : supplementary courseware for assisting students learning Chinese characters /." Link to the online version, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10019/1326.
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Juffs, Alan. "Learnability and the lexicon in second language acquisition : Chinese learners' acquisition of English argument structure." Thesis, McGill University, 1993. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=41626.
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This thesis investigates the knowledge of semantics-syntax correspondences in second language acquisition (SLA) within the Principles and Parameters framework. A parameter of semantic structure is proposed to account for crosslinguistic syntactic differences between two previously unrelated, and superficially distinct, verb classes: change of state locatives and 'psychological' verbs. Chinese and English contrast in terms of the parameter setting. Experimental evidence indicates that adult Chinese learners of English L2 initially transfer parameter settings, but are able to reset the proposed parameter. However, they only acquire L2 lexical properties and concomitant syntactic privileges with ease when L2 input adds a representation to their grammar. When positive L2 input should pre-empt overgeneralizations based on representation transferred from the L1, it is shown that L1 influence may persist until quite advanced stages of acquisition. The implications of the results are discussed for the parameter setting model of SLA.
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Yuan, Boping. "Directionality of difficulty in second language acquisition of Chinese and English." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/17576.
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This thesis is concerned with the investigation of directionality of difficulty in second language acquisition (SLA) by Chinese-speaking learners learning English as a foreign language (EFL) and by English-speaking learners learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) . Chinese allows both subject PRO in finite clauses and object pro. However, subject PRO in finite clauses and object pro give rise to ungrammaticality in English. Unlike Chinese, in which topics can be base-generated, English does not allow a base-generated topic. Chinese and English are also different in that while English reflexives can only take a local subject in finite clauses as their antecedent (thus a short-distance reflexive), the Chinese reflexive ziji can take the matrix subject as well as the embedded subject as its antecedent (thus a long-distance reflexive) . With respect to these differences between the two languages, our focus is on whether it is more difficult for CFL learners to acquire subject PRO, object pro, base-generated topics and the long-distance reflexive in the acquisition of Chinese than for EFL learners to unlearn subject PRO, object pro, base-generated topics and the long-distance reflexive in the acquisition of English. The results of our study suggest that there is no single direction of difficulty in the SLA of Chinese and English. In terms of object pro, the direction of difficulty is from Chinese to English. However, in acquiring and unlearning the subject PRO, neither CFL learners nor EFL learners seem to have much difficulty. As for base-generated topics, it is found that the acquisition of this feature by CFL learners is more difficult than the unlearning of this feature by EFL learners. The results concerning the acquisition of the Chinese long-distance reflexive ziji by CFL learners suggest that a lack of long-distance binding for ziji is fossilized in these learners' interlanguage (IL) grammars of Chinese. Based on the findings in this study, we argue that the directionality of difficulty in SLA can only be studied with respect to individual language features and that the mere existence of relevant positive evidence in the input is not a guarantee that there will be a change in the learner's IL grammar. There are many factors involved in deciding the direction of difficulty in SLA. These factors include the availability of informative evidence to the learner, the possibility that the learner makes use of the evidence available for the restructuring of his IL grammar of the target language, the learners' ability to process the relevant data in the input, and the interaction between the structure in the learners' L1 and the inherent developmental stage of the target language.
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Lyu, Ting. "Second language vocabulary acquisition through storybook reading for Chinese children." Scholarly Commons, 2016. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/4.
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This six-week quasi-experimental study compared the effectiveness of two English storybook reading styles (preview-review reading versus concurrent translation) on the vocabulary development of kindergarteners ( n =50) in China, whose primary language is Chinese, who learn English as a second language. The children (aged 5 to 6) were pretested to evaluate their knowledge of general and targeted words using a researcher-designed instrument tailored to the content of three selected English stories. Validity evidence based on contrasted groups and test-retest reliability had been previously gathered for the 24-word instrument (based on 8 words per story) in a pilot study. The children in the concurrent translation group listened to the English storybook with the reader using both English and Chinese interchangeably to assist children in understanding the story. With the children in the preview-review group, the reader built background knowledge and discussed difficult vocabulary in Chinese before reading the storybook only in English then reinforcing key points in Chinese after reading the storybook. Each of three English stories was read three times by the researcher/reader separately to both groups. Two days after the third reading of each story, children were post-tested on the 8 words associated with that specific story. Total posttest scores, based on combining the three 8-word posttest scores, were compared to the 24-word pretest scores to examine vocabulary gains. Results suggest that both methods of reading English storybooks to Chinese preschoolers were effective. Results also indicate that children in the concurrent translation group performed significantly better than children in the preview-review group, even after initial levels of vocabulary, based on the pretest, were controlled (Cohen’s ƒ 2 = .42, which is considered to be a large effect). Additionally, an Aptitude x Treatment Interaction model was tested, but insufficient evidence was found to suggest that the differential effectiveness of the two methods depended on the child’s initial vocabulary level. Implications for teachers, parents, and early childhood education policymakers are discussed and suggestions for further research are offered.
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Charters, Areta Helen. "The second language acquisition of Mandarin nominal syntax." Thesis, University of Auckland, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2292/2405.
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This thesis establishes a natural acquisition order for 18 nominal structures in Mandarin SLA, and assesses the extent to which that order can be explained as a consequence of cognitive processing demands. The natural acquisition order is based on a longitudinal study of three adults learning Mandarin in a classroom environment in Auckland, New Zealand. Two representatives of an average emergence order are derived from the three individual orders: a ranking of mean emergence times (RMT) and a ranking of mean emergence ranks (RMR). Processing demands are calculated in three different ways: once on the basis of six developmental stages identified in Pienemann’s Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998c), once on the basis of a detailed analysis of each nominal structure according to the generative grammar of LFG (Bresnan, 1982, 2001); and finally on the basis of the Minimalist Programme (Chomsky 1995; 1999; 2000). All rest upon a prior analysis of lexical feature structures and constituent structures evident in the learner’s output over the course of a year. The standard six-stage model of Processability Theory proves unable to differentiate between most nominal structures, because they fall within the single developmental category of so-called ‘phrasal’ structures. However, processing demands calculated on the basis either of LFG or of the MP prove to be highly correlated with both individual and average emergence orders. On the basis of these results, various generalisations are made about the relevance of different kinds of syntactic processes to the determination of emergence order. In particular, c-structural complexity and thematic structure are found to be factors most significantly associated with later emergence times. LFG and MP each provide interesting insights into different aspects of syntactic processing that impact on the acquisition of a second language; LFG throws light on the significance of the grammaticalisation of thematic structure; the MP throws light on the processes of lexical construction, and the interactions between this and constituent structure. Both indicate the significance of delays in feature valuation or unification as c-structural complexity increases.
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Ho, Suk-han Connie. "The relevance of visual & phonological abilities for Chinese beginningreaders." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1989. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29783021.
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Lai, Shuk-mei Angela. "The acquisition of deictic terms in Chinese children." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1992. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29788985.
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鄭俊洺 and Chun-ming Cheng. "The connectionism approach to syntactic and semantic acquisition of simple Chinese sentences: the role of wordorder information." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31224118.
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Lin, Chieh-Ting. "The effects of teacher-fronted and group work techniques on beginning Chinese as a Foreign Language learners' acquisition of grammar in a Performed Culture classroom /." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2008. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2615.pdf.
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Qi, Ruying, University of Western Sydney, of Arts Education and Social Sciences College, and School of Languages and Linguistics. "From nominal reference to the acquisition of personal pronouns in a Mandarin-English bilingual child." THESIS_CAESS_LLI_Qi_R.xml, 2004. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/466.
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This longitudinal study aims to trace the developmental route from nominal to pronominal reference to person in a bilingual first language acquirer of two typologically distinct languages : Mandarin and English. The study reveals that experiencing different types of input influences the speed and movement by which personal pronouns are learned in language production. The study provides some exploration into the role of the weaker language in bilingual language development as well as the nature and extent of the early separation and interaction of two linguistic systems in a language environment which is fundamentally unlike the one parent-one-language setting. The data-set of the work consists of over 65 tape recorded sessions of naturalistic speech collected over 30 months in context-based language use in either Mandarin or English, where Mandarin is the home(and minority) language spoken by both parents and other family members while English is the(dominant)language of all other environments.<br>Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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Yang, Jun. "The acquisition of temporality by adult second language learners of Chinese." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280075.
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This dissertation is about the acquisition of temporality in the Chinese language by adult native English speakers. The major objective is to chart the course of development of temporality by adult English-speaking learners of Chinese and explore the universals in the acquisition of temporality. The dataset used for this dissertation study consists of the Pear Story narratives produced by twenty native speakers of Chinese and the Pear Story narratives produced by twenty-one English-speaking adult second language learners of Chinese, grouped into three different proficiency levels--the low, the intermediate and the high level. It is found that both native speakers of Chinese and adult learners have available at their disposal a repertoire of explicit and implicit encoding devices in which grammatical means is among the least often used. However, in comparison with native speakers, learners' repertoire is smaller and contains less varied items. Regarding the use of a particular aspectual particle, perfective le, it is found that both native speakers and learners are constrained by multiple factors. However, some factors affecting native speakers have not been acquired by learners yet and even the same type of factors affecting both native speakers and learners have different constraining strengths for the two groups. Clear developmental patterns are found in learners' acquisition of temporality in narrative discourse. As learners gain proficiency in the target language, they grow from preferring implicit encoding to preferring explicit encoding, their use of grammatical means increases against lexical means, and their reliance on the discourse context decreases. These universal developmental patterns are observed in both the foreground and the background clauses. What is found in this analysis highlights the role of input, as most of the development tendencies reflect the grammar and language use by the native speakers. However, there is evidence that L1 transfer could additionally play a role in learners' acquisition of some temporal properties of the target language. The implications of the findings of this study for the teaching of Chinese as a second language and for the acquisition study of aspectual particles in Chinese will also be discussed.
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Qu, Chen. "Representation and acquisition of the tonal system of Mandarin Chinese." Thesis, McGill University, 2013. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=119377.
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This thesis examines the representation and acquisition of the Mandarin tonal system. The proposals raised relate to three areas of phonological research: formal phonology, Mandarin phonology and the acquisition of phonology. Concerning formal phonology, the proposals are mainly three. First, tones are internally structured, following Yip (1990) and Bao (1999). Second, tone and stress can co-occur in tone languages, following Hyman (2006). And the uneven trochee should be recognized as one of the universal foot shapes across languages. Last, there is a relation between rising tone and stress, and between level tone and lack of stress. A relation also holds between high register and stress, and between low register and lack of stress. Stress determines the realization of tone. Stress makes tone high and rising; lack of stress makes tone level. Turning to Mandarin phonology, the proposals made in this thesis concern the formal representations of tones, prosodic structure and their interaction in tone sandhi processes. It is argued that Mandarin tones are underspecified: High register and rising contour are specified which, when embedded in a geometry where register (either H or L) and contour are sisters under the tonal node, results in the five-way tonal contrast of Mandarin, with T2 being the most marked tone and T0 the least marked. It is suggested that Mandarin is a weight-sensitive language and that a four-way weight distinction must be recognized: super-heavy (trimoraic), heavy (bimoraic), light (monomoraic) and weightless (moraless). Relatedly, it is argued that Mandarin strives to build uneven trochees, and that word-level stress falls on the leftmost heavy syllable in the domain of the phonological word. It is also proposed that phrasal stress in Mandarin falls on the rightmost head syllable in the domain of the phrase. The overarching point made concerning Mandarin prosodic structure is that the language respects the prosodic hierarchy most commonly adopted for other languages, in contrast to the position of many previous researchers working on the language. As far as tone sandhi is concerned, this thesis provides a unified stress-based account for the three processes attested in the language: T2 sandhi, T3 sandhi and yi-bu-qi-ba sandhi. It is argued that T2 sandhi targets prosodic dependent position and changes the tone from more marked to less marked; T3 sandhi and yi-bu-qi-ba sandhi target prosodic head position and change the tone from less marked to more marked. Turning to the acquisition of phonology, a hypothesis is formulated for children acquiring contour tone languages, which respects the Successive Division Algorithm (Dresher 2009) as well as Minimality and Monotonicity (Rice & Avery 1995, Rice 1995). This hypothesis leads to predictions for children's tonal behavior at each stage in development, including the point at which tone sandhi should be acquired. It is predicted that children acquiring contour tone languages may vary at the onset of acquisition because Universal Grammar provides two possible launching points: "register" and "contour". Subsequent stages in development are predicted to vary as well, if children acquire the tonal contrasts through repeated binary splits of the phonological space, as per the Successive Division Algorithm, and by adding one degree of complexity to representations at a time, following Minimality and Monotonicity. The hypothesis for children's acquisition of contour tone languages is tested against naturalistic longitudinal data collected from two children in northern China: GY and LL. The two children acquire the tonal system differently: GY focuses on "register", whereas LL on "contour" earlier. The children's tonal behavior over time is also different, including the points at which they acquire tone sandhi processes. The cross- and within- subject variation observed at the initial and subsequent stages of acquisition is shown to conform to the predictions.<br>Cette thèse étudie les représentations et l'acquisition du système tonal du mandarin. Les propositions soulevées dans la thèse touchent trois domaines de la recherche en phonologie : la phonologie formelle, la phonologie du mandarin et l'acquisition de la phonologie. La phonologie formelle a trois aspects. Premièrement, la thèse appuie l'approche de Yip (1980/1990) et de Bao (1990/1999) selon laquelle les tons ont une structure interne. Puis, il peut y avoir une cooccurrence du ton et de l'accent dans les langues tonales et la trochée inégale devrait être comptée comme une forme de pied universelle. Enfin, il existe une relation entre les tons montants et l'accent, entre le ton neutre et l'absence d'accent. Une relation existe aussi entre un registre haut et l'accent; entre un registre bas et l'absence d'accent. En effet, l'accent détermine la réalisation du ton: la position de la tête prosodique engendre un ton haut et montant; la manque de cette dernière entraine un ton neutre. Les propositions de cette thèse touchent les représentations formelles des tons, la structure prosodique et leur interaction dans les processus de sandhi tonal. Il est montré que les tons du mandarin sont sous-spécifiés: quand ils se trouvent dans une géométrie où le registre (H ou B) et le contour sont sœurs sous le nœud tonal, le registre haut et le contour montant sont spécifiés et engendre les cinq contrastes toniques du mandarin où T2 est le ton le plus marqué et T0 le moins marqué. La thèse propose aussi que le mandarin est une langue sensible au poids et que ses quatre distinctions doivent être reconnues: super-lourde (trimoraïque), lourde (bimoraïque), légère (monomoraïque) et sans-poids (sans more). Le mandarin cherche à construire des trochées inégales et l'accent de mot tombe sur la syllabe lourde la plus à gauche du domaine du mot phonologique. L'accent syntagmatique tombe sur la tête syllabe qui est la plus à droite du domaine du syntagme. L'idée qui s'oppose à la position de plusieurs chercheurs, est l'utilisation de la hiérarchie prosodique communément employée pour autres langues. Quant à sandhi tonal, la thèse propose une explication fondée sur l'accent pour trois processus attestés dans la langue : le sandhi T2, le sandhi T3 et le sandhi yi-bu-qi-ba. Le sandhi T2 vise les dépendants prosodique et change d'un ton plus marqué à un ton moins marqué, le sandhi T3 et le sandhi yi-bu-qi-ba affectent la tête prosodique et changent d'un ton moins marqué à un ton plus marqué. Une hypothèse concernant l'acquisition des langues tonales à contour chez l'enfant est formulée en respectant l'algorithme de division successive (Dresher 2009) et les principes de minimalité et de monotonicité (Rice & Avery 1995, Rice 1996). Cette hypothèse prédit le comportement tonal des enfants à tous les stades du développement, incluant le moment où le sandhi tonal devrait être acquis. Une variation est possible quand les enfants apprennent une langue tonale à contour car la grammaire universelle propose deux points de départs: le «registre» et le «contour». Les stades subséquents du développement peuvent varier si l'enfant acquiert les contrastes tonique suite à des divisions binaires répétées selon l'algorithme de division successive, ou l'ajout d'un degré de complexité de représentation à la fois, selon les principes de minimalité et de monotonicité. L'hypothèse est confrontée à des données longitudinales prises auprès de deux enfants du nord de la Chine, GY et LL, lors d'entretiens informels dans leur milieu naturel. Les deux enfants ont appris le système différemment: GY se concentre sur le «registre» avant le «contour» et LL se concentre sur le «contour» avant le «registre». Le comportement tonal de ces enfants à travers le temps diffère aussi au niveau du moment où ils acquièrent les processus du sandhi tonal. Ainsi, la variation observée au début de l'acquisition puis dans les stades subséquents conforme aux prédictions.
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Ko, Shu-Ling. "Female CFL (Chinese as Foreign Language) Learners' Acquisition of Native-Like Features of Feminine Chinese Speech." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2009. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2179.
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This study was designed to evaluate the correlation between participants' acquisition of feminine Chinese speech patterns and time lived in Chinese speaking areas. These patterns include final particles, key words, request words, sentence patterns, and intonation. Data collection was administered through an on-line survey. Participants in this study included twenty female native Mandarin Chinese speakers and 39 female CFL learners. The data collected revealed the correlation between the participants' acquisition of feminine Chinese speech patterns and time spent abroad in a Chinese language environment. Part one of the survey targeted the demographics of the participants. The second part of the survey contained five scenarios that allowed the participants to reveal their reactions to different situations. These groups were separated by the amount of time spent abroad and then analyzed according to these parameters.
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Xiao, Xiaoyun, and 肖晓云. "Development of syntactic skills in Chinese children." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2010. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B43754089.
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Xiao, Xiaoyun. "Development of syntactic skills in Chinese children." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2010. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B43754089.
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Du, Hang. "The acquisition of the Chinese ba-constructionby adult second language learners." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/290065.
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The ba-construction is probably the best-known syntactic construction in Modern Standard Chinese, but little has been done on the acquisition of it by second language learners. My study fills this gap. The theoretical framework is Liu's (1997) aspectual analysis of ba. The study is experimental. The constraint on the ba-NP and the constraint on the ba-VP were investigated. The constraint on the ba-NP is that it has to be specific. The constraint on the ba-VP is that it has to be complex. Two of the structures that can satisfy the complexity constraint on the ba-VP, the resultative verb complement (RVC) and the perfective aspect marker le were investigated. The subjects were 65 students learning Chinese in the intensive Chinese program at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California. They were divided into three groups according to the number of weeks that they had studied Chinese at the DLI. A group of 20 native speakers of Chinese also participated as a control group. The study involved two experiments: production and grammaticality judgments. In the production experiment, I designed pairs of actions on video tape and asked the subjects to describe the actions with two Chinese sentences. In the grammaticality judgment experiment, I played some of the video clips from the production experiment and asked the subjects to tell whether some written Chinese sentences accurately described the actions that they saw in the video scenes. I also asked the subjects to indicate their confidence in their judgments. Results were that even though the learners generally produced fewer ba-constructions than the native speakers in the production experiment, their judgments of most of the sentences were not significantly different from those of native speakers, indicating that they had some good knowledge of the construction. Moreover, learners with similar production patterns showed different patterns in their grammaticality judgments, suggesting that the two kinds of data complement each other in our understanding of language acquisition. Results also show that the confidence dimension captured subtle differences that would not have been captured by the grammaticality dimension alone in the grammaticality judgment experiment. It has been found that using the canonical SVO word order and the drop of the object are the two most common patterns used by learners to substitute for the ba-construction. Error patterns have also been identified. Some "unexpected" patterns of grammaticality judgments from native speakers suggest that the learners had not yet been exposed to some interesting phenomena in the language that interfered with the ba -construction. One such example is the topicalization of the object to the position between the subject and the verb. Some native speakers accepted such sentences while most learners rejected them probably because they had not been exposed to such structures yet. Finally, the variation among native speakers in their judgments of the ba-construction calls for a more systematic study of exactly how native speakers of Standard Chinese use the ba-construction, especially those who have been exposed to other Chinese dialects.
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Bao, Xuehua. "Morphological processing of Chinese words among elementary students." Click to view E-thesis via HKUTO, 2006. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B37090185.
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Kim, Shin-hye. "The acquisition of tense and aspect by Korean and Chinese learners of English /." Digital version accessible at:, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.
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Zhang, Hang Smith Jennifer L. "A phonological study of second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,1339.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007.<br>Title from electronic title page (viewed Apr. 25, 2008). "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Linguistics." Discipline: Linguistics; Department/School: Linguistics.
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Xu, Yi. "The Syntax, Processing and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese Relative Clauses." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195226.
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The structural complexity and the typological universals associated with relative clauses (RCs) have made the structure particularly interesting to linguists and second language acquisition (SLA) researchers. Currently, much controversy is found in RCs in East Asian Languages. This dissertation tests the syntactic status of "relative clauses" in Chinese and explores second language (L2) learners' processing and production of different types of Chinese RCs.In the theoretical part of the dissertation, I test whether Comrie (2002)'s proposal of analyzing putative relative clauses in East Asian languages as "attributive clauses" can be applicable to Chinese. From a review of syntactic literature and movement test, I argue that there are crucial differences between Chinese RCs and attributive clauses. Further, reconstruction effect suggests that A-bar movement takes place within gapped Chinese RCs. More specifically, following Sauerland (2000)'s proposal, I suggest that the derivation of Chinese RCs involves the movement of an operator taking a complex NP as its complement to the Spec of CP, and that complex NP matches with an external head outside the RC.Further, I examine the possibility of analyzing AdjP+DE structure as relative clauses, and examine the flexibility and effect of demonstrative and numeral-classifier positions and their relation with relative clauses.In the experiment chapter, I discuss results from three experiments that tested the relative degrees of difficulty for L2 learners among different types of RCs including Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object and Object of Preposition relative clauses, I seek plausible linguistic and psycholinguistic proposals in explaining the performance data. The experiments include a self-paced word order judgment task, a written sentence completion task, and a written sentence combination task. It was found that the L2 acquisition of Chinese RCs is generally consistent with the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy (Keenan & Comrie, 1977), a typological generalization based on natural languages and a hierarchy that was found to be predictive of learners' order of acquisition in SLA studies of many other languages.
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Fu, I.-Ping P. "Student Approaches to Learning Chinese Vocabulary." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/25955.
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This research focuses on the strategies that native English speakers use as they learn to speak and write Chinese vocabulary words in the first year of an elementary Chinese class. The main research question was: what strategies do native English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese use to learn Chinese vocabulary words in their speaking and writing? The study was conducted at a medium-sized comprehensive university in the Southeastern U.S. The study drew from concepts and theories in second language acquisition and psycholinguistic studies. A random sampling of four students was selected in their first year of Chinese study for qualitative analyses. Data were collected from demographic student surveys, reflection papers, interviews, observation and field notes, weekly diary of the students and Strategies Inventory for Language Learning (SILL).
The conclusions from this study provide insight as to how students of this demographic approach the challenge of learning Chinese. From this study, a clear picture emerges that students use different strategies to learn Chinese. Some students respond better to sound while others are more visually based learners. However, in this study, students used combinations of audio, visual, and kinesthetic learning techniques. The tonality of spoken Chinese was one of the most difficult skills to master and this aspect of the language frustrated many students. This is a widely recognized problem with Chinese education. Nevertheless, students enjoyed the artistic nature of Chinese characters and for the most part enjoyed writing them. This element can be emphasized in Chinese instruction to motivate students and appeal to visual learners. Similarly, integrating instruction on Chinese culture into language classes made the Elementary Chinese curriculum more appealing to students. Using native Chinese speakers from the local community in the language curriculum, reinforced classroom instruction, made the instruction more relevant, and increased student interest. Encouraging students to attend Chinese cultural events in the community had many of the same positive benefits for students. The motivations for learning revealed in this study are very interesting and support earlier studies of Chinese learners. Personal and profession interests as well as a combination of both these factors were the most commonly cited reasons for learning Chinese. Maintaining proper motivation is a pivotal factor that determines the success of many elementary learners including the students in this study. When students lost their motivation, interest in the curriculum and learning declined as well. Teachers need to be aware of motivations and attempt to foster them in individual students in order to maximize the learning experience.<br>Ph. D.
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Cao, Xuexin. "The acquisition of double-gapped relatives in Chinese: Grammar and processing." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/28978.
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This dissertation is an acquisition study of double-gap relatives in Chinese, developed under the thesis of subject-object asymmetry as postulated in Huang (1984). Two sets of act-out experiments were conducted. The first experiment tested covert-binder relatives, i.e. double gap relatives with the binder of their non-head EC unmentioned in the sentence. This type of relative was presented in two contexts: pragmatically neutral vs. biased conditions. Assuming that in the absence of pragmatic bias there is a requirement for the head of a double gap relative to be construed as the object of the relative, it was speculated that the provision of a topic NP might produce a swing towards the head of the relative being construed as the relative subject. Under this speculation, it was predicted that there would be a higher proportion of subject interpretation of the relative head in the pragmatically enriched condition than in the neutral condition. The second experiment is a follow-up, testing overt-binder relative, i.e. double gap relatives with either an overt matrix subject or topic as a potential binder of their non-head EC of the relative. The prediction here was that while a subject interpretation of the head for a subject-binder relative should be linguistically blocked, the head of a topic-binder relative was allowed to be interpreted either as the null subject or as the null object of the relative. The main result is that there is a general preference for construing the head as the null object for both covert- and overt-binder relatives. An additional finding is that the younger children, but not the older children, show some sensitivity to context, giving more object construals under the enriched condition. Huang's account is not supported by the data. The general preference for the head as null object is explained in terms of an independently attested principle of sentence processing: empty categories are always identified as soon as possible in on line coreference assignment (e.g. Nicol & Swinney, 1989; Gibson, 1998). Young children's sensitivity to the enriched context calls for future work in the field of acquisition and processing.
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Ming, Tao. "The acquisition of temporal marking a bidirectional study /." Diss., Restricted to subscribing institutions, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1619405921&sid=2&Fmt=2&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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謝宗義 and Chung-yee Andrew Tse. "The acquisition process of Cantonese phonology: a case study." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1991. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31210569.
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Randolph, Tamara Lee Dietrich. "Culture-mediated literature adult Chinese EFL student response to folktales /." access full-text online access from Digital dissertation consortium, 2000. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?9988979.
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Li, Yu. "Comparison of the comprehension of three types of Chinese colloquial idioms by advanced Chinese L2 learners." Diss., University of Iowa, 2016. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2112.
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This study explores how comprehension strategies, first language (L1), and contextual information affect the comprehension and interpretation of three types of colloquial idioms by Chinese as a second language (L2) learners at an advanced level of proficiency. Three research questions are addressed: (1) to what extent does context affect the comprehension and interpretation of three types of Chinese colloquial idioms, (2) to what extent does the degree of L1–L2 similarity influence the comprehension and interpretation of the Chinese colloquial idioms, and (3) what strategies are employed by the learners in comprehending the Chinese colloquial idioms in isolation and in context, and which strategies contribute to better comprehension of the Chinese colloquial idioms in context.
To address these research questions, 30 advanced Chinese L2 learners at a Midwest University participated in the study. They were asked to comprehend 15 unknown colloquial idioms in and out of context. All of the participants were native speakers of English. The 15 target idiomatic phrases differed in terms of the degree of L1–L2 similarity, including 5 matching idioms, 5 partially matching idioms, and 5 non-matching idioms. In the decontextualized condition, the participants were given a list of the target colloquial idioms without contextual information, whereas in the contextualized condition, the target colloquial idioms were embedded in short paragraph context. For both tasks, the individual participants were required to verbalize their thought processes as they arrived at the meanings of the target colloquial idioms. Think-aloud protocols were employed to collect qualitative data.
It was discovered that context substantially facilitated the comprehension processes of the target colloquial idioms, especially with respect to the partially matching category. The degree of L1–L2 similarity significantly affected the ease with which the participants understood the Chinese colloquial idioms in the decontextualized and contextualized tasks. In the decontextualized condition, the participants generally adopted a “part-to-whole and literal-to-figurative” approach to interpret the target items, whereas in the contextualized condition, the participants adopted a heuristic method and employed a wide range of strategies (e.g., sentence translation, component words, and background knowledge) to access meaning of the target idioms. Among the strategies identified, semantic processing and pre-existing knowledge were strong predictors of accurate idiom interpretation. Instead of using existing L1 idiom comprehension models to explain the comprehension of idioms in an L2, a tentative model of idiom comprehension was proposed. L2 learners appeared to undergo two stages in comprehending unknown Chinese colloquial idioms: an initial prediction stage and a verification stage.
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Siok, Wai-ting, and 蕭慧婷. "The role of phonological awareness and visual-orthographic skills in Chinese reading acquisition." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2001. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29799429.
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De, la Rouviere Jeremiah Daneil. "Chinese radicals in spaced repetition systems : a pilot study on the acquisition of Chinese characters by students learning Chinese as a foreign language." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/80325.
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Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2013.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores the effect on learning Chinese characters for learners of Chinese as
foreign language through implementing the unique properties of the Chinese script in a
prototype spaced repetition system. Both Chinese radicals and the spacing effect have the
potential to positively influence the recall ability of students in learning Chinese
characters, however the interaction between the spacing effect and Chinese radicals in
spaced repetition system, such as Anki and Mnemosyne, had not been tested. An
experimental spaced repetition system prototype was designed and developed to
investigate these interactions. Two groups of students learning Chinese as a foreign
language at the University of Stellenbosch studied the same list of Chinese characters in
which there were both massed and spaced characters present. One group had additional
information on Chinese radicals on the flashcard. The students were given an immediate
post-test to test their recall of the meaning and pronunciation of the Chinese characters.
The results showed a positive trend for the spacing effect in which students had higher
scores for spaced characters, but the recall ability between the two groups of students did
not change regardless of whether there was information on Chinese radicals or not. The
results were surprising considering the potential positive impact of Chinese radicals on
recall. The thesis concludes that the presentation of information on Chinese radicals in a
spaced repetition system does not necessarily improve the recall ability of the students.
The impact of explicit instruction on the role of Chinese radicals in Chinese characters and
the ability of the student to apply this knowledge should be considered for future
research.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die huidige tesis ondersoek die leer van Chinese karakters deur leerders van Chinees as ‘n
vreemde taal deur die unieke eienskappe van die Chinese skrif in ‘n prototipe
gespasieërde herhalings sisteem te implementeer. Beide Chinese radikale en die
spasiërings effek kan potensieël 'n positiewe invloed hê in die vermoë van studente om
Chinese karakters te onthou, maar die interaksie tussen die spasiërings effek en Chinese
radikale in gespasieërde herhalings sisteme, soos Anki en Mnemosyne, was tot dusver
onbekend. ‘n Eksperimentele gespasieërde herhalings sisteem prototipe was geskep om
hierdie interaksie te ondersoek. Twee groepe studente van Chinees as vreemde taal by die
Universiteit van Stellenbosch het dieselfde lys karakters gestudeer, waaronder
gespasieërde en nie-gespasieërde karakters tuis was. Die twee groepe het verskil deurdat
een groep ekstra informasie oor Chinese radikale gehad het op die voorkant van 'n
flitskaart. Die studente het dadelik daarna ‘n toets ontvang waar hul die betekenis en
uitspraak van die Chinese karakters moes onthou. Die resultate het ‘n positiewe neiging
getoon vir die spasiërings effek waar studente hoër punte ontvang het vir gespasieërde
karakters, maar die vermoë om die karakters te onthou het nie verskil tussen die twee
groepe nie. Die resultate was ‘n verassing juis omdat daar ‘n potensieël positiewe invloed
kan onstaan deur die impak van Chinese radikale. Die tesis het gevind dat slegs om
informasie oor Chinese radikale te wys in ‘n gespasieërde herhalings sisteem nie
noodwendig die vermoë van die student om Chinese karakters te onthou verbeter nie. Die
impak van eksplisiete instruksie oor die rol wat Chinese radikale in Chinese karakters
speel en die vermoë van die student om hierdie kennis toe te pas hoort verder ondersoek te word.
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McEwen, Ping. "Vocabulary Acquisition in CFL (Chinese as a Foreign Language) Contexts: a Correlation of Performance and Strategy Use." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2006. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd1217.pdf.
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Law, Wai Fun Fanny. "Negative transfer in Chinese students' acquisition of English." HKBU Institutional Repository, 1998. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/99.
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Huang, Yi-Tzu. "Interactive patterns in paired discussions between Chinese heritage and Chinese foreign language learners." Diss., University of Iowa, 2012. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2524.
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Having acquired some degree of oral proficiency but low (or non-existent) literacy, the learning of Chinese heritage learners' (CHLs) learning needs are different from those of Chinese foreign language learners (CFLs), who have learned Chinese only in the classroom setting. Although researchers have advocated for a separate curriculum for CHLs, creating a heritage track may not be an option for many Chinese programs due to insufficient enrollment and limited resources. Huge proficiency variations among CHLs also make it difficult to provide a language curriculum that fits the needs of all learners. Therefore, CHLs are assigned to classes with CFLs in most Chinese language programs. From a pedagogical point of view, uneven proficiency levels are a great concern for instructors who teach a language class with students of different language backgrounds and with varying abilities, especially when assigning students to work in pairs or small groups. Although CHL-CFL paired interaction has become a common phenomenon in Chinese language classes, it has not been fully explored.
Grounded in sociocultural theory, this research explores the nature of dyadic interaction between Chinese heritage learners (CHLs) and Chinese foreign language learners (CFLs) in a classroom setting. It investigates the roles that Chinese heritage learners and their foreign language peers play in paired discussions, how learners' proficiency gaps influence the dynamics of paired interaction, and whether peer-peer collaboration affects learners' individual oral performance.
In this study, data were collected in three intermediate-level Chinese classes. Participants first filled out a language background survey to lead to a better understanding of the environments in which they use Chinese. Next, they took two proficiency tests to assess their comprehensive Chinese skills. Over the course of a semester, ten CHL-CFL pairs engaged in paired discussions on six different occasions. Before and after each pair work session, each participant was required to give an individual verbal report assessing the influence of paired interaction on his or her oral performance. After data from the six sessions were collected, participants took an end-of-study survey, which provides their perceptions about paired discussion and their roles in paired interaction over the research period.
According to the findings, three interaction patterns (passive collaboration pattern, active collaboration pattern, and peer-tutoring pattern) were identified. The results of this study show that CHLs' language background and the amount of Chinese language exposure determined the CHL-CFL proficiency gaps in each pair, and further influenced the pattern of paired interaction. Learners generated more LREs (Language-related episodes) and were more likely to acquire knowledge from pair work when the degree of interaction mutuality was high. Even when the proficiency gaps were large, the less proficient learners still could transfer new knowledge to their independent work.
To conclude, this study may be of importance in presenting the dynamics of CHL-CFL paired interaction in a mixed Chinese language class, as well as in providing instructors with a better understanding of how different factors such as interlocutors' proficiency gaps, individual participants' beliefs and attitudes relate to their interaction behaviors and subsequent independent performance.
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Ilnyckyj, Roma Areta. "Learning as laowai : race, social positioning, and Chinese language acquisition in China." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/28458.
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Due to China’s increasing economic and political power, interest in learning Chinese as an Additional Language (CAL) is growing rapidly around the world. Large numbers of learners with no historical or cultural ties to China are undertaking the study of Mandarin, often for professional or economic gain. Research in the field of CAL has traditionally been driven by cognitive considerations, and has only recently begun to examine social and cultural factors that influence the learning of Chinese. In particular, the relationships between language acquisition and social identity categories such as race, gender, and class have only begun to be investigated.
This interview-based multiple case study explored the relationship between racial identity and language acquisition in China. Interviews were conducted with five adult, White learners of Mandarin who had previously studied or worked in China. The study found that participants were sensitive to their privileged position in the Chinese context, and worked to construct the identity of the conscientious sojourner in order to address this privilege. Simultaneously, their racialized identity as White sojourners caused their learning of Chinese to function as discordant knowledge, or knowledge that they were not, for social and cultural reasons, expected to possess. This discordance of their knowledge often allowed participants greater power or access to particular target communities.
This study provides insight into the experiences of a particular set of White learners of Chinese, offering a starting point for further research into the relationship between racial identity and Chinese language acquisition.
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Matthews, Guy. "Second language acquisition of English reflexives by Taiwanese speakers of Mandarin Chinese." Thesis, University of Essex, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.446480.
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Jiang, Lin. "Second language acquisition of English 'pronominality' by advanced proficiency Chinese-speaking learners." Thesis, University of Essex, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.422240.
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Yeung, Nai-chi. "Pre-lexical phonological activation in silent reading of Chinese." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1989. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B29783434.
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McGory, Julia Tevis. "Acquisition of intonational prominence in English by Seoul Korean and Mandarin Chinese speakers." The Ohio State University, 1997. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1299009149.
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Kato, Toshihito School of Modern Language Studies UNSW. "Acquisition of Japanese vocabulary by Chinese background learners: the roles of transfer in the productive and receptive acquisition of cognates and polysemy." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of Modern Language Studies, 2006. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/27306.
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As is widely known, Japanese and Chinese not only share the common logo graphic orthography called ???kanji??? or ???hanzi??? respectively, but also share a number of kanji compounds as cognates, many of which share the same or similar meaning. The major objective of this dissertation is to investigate the roles of transfer and the difficulty in Chinese background learners??? (CBLs???) use and acquisition of Japanese kanji compounds and kanji words. In particular, under what condition and how CBLs transfer Chinese words into Japanese counterparts is investigated. The results of a lexicality judgement test, an oral production test, and a translation test showed that acquisition of partially deceptive cognates, which share the same orthography with partly the same and partly different meanings, was often prolonged. It was also found that the difficulty of acquisition of partially deceptive cognates varied according to their cross-linguistic semantic condition and task type. In the oral production test, CBLs frequently used L1 words by adapting them into L2 phonology both successfully and unsuccessfully when they had no prior knowledge of the L2 counterparts. In addition, negative transfer was detected even when CBLs had a correct knowledge of the L2 word. The results of the translation test revealed that CBLs are liable to misinterpret the meaning of partially deceptive cognates when one of their meanings happens to make sense within the context. Additionally, it is suggested that CBLs might create different types of interlanguage depending upon the cross-linguistic semantic condition and relative frequency of the L2 input for each meaning of the partially deceptive cognates. The transferability of polysemy was found to be constrained by prototype condition, learners??? existing L2 knowledge, and task type. While transferability correlated well with the perceived prototypicality of the L1 items in CBLs??? oral production, transfer was also at work for the less prototypical items in their comprehension task. The findings indicate that the transferability of Chinese words into their Japanese counterparts is constrained by multiple factors. Further, both positive and negative transfer influence CBLs??? production, comprehension, and interlanguage construction of Japanese vocabulary in a complex manner.
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Xia, Mengying. "Acquisition of metaphorical expressions by Chinese learners of English." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/284383.
Full textAbstract:
This study investigates the acquisition of conventional metaphorical expressions by Chinese learners of English. A conventional metaphorical expression, following the definition of cognitive semantics, refers to the use of a conventionalised non-literal meaning of a lexical item in a multi-word phrase. For example, the word 'attack' in the phrase 'attack one's idea', which should be interpreted as 'to criticise somebody or something severely', clearly departs from the literal meaning 'to use violence to try to hurt or kill somebody', and thus should be seen as a metaphorically used word. Consequently, the phrase 'attack one's idea' is a conventional metaphorical expression. This study explores learners' behaviour towards and acquisition of metaphorical expressions from two major perspectives: (1) possible cross-linguistic influence in the process of acquisition and factors that could affect cross-linguistic influence; and (2) the organisation of learners' bilingual lexicon and the status of metaphorical expressions in a bilingual lexicon. These two perspectives are considered to be the main factors that can influence learners' acquisition of metaphorical expressions: in order to acquire a metaphorical expression, learners should be able to integrate it into the bilingual lexicon, while the process of integration can be impacted by cross-linguistic influence. Previous research has mainly been conducted on the acquisition of certain figurative expressions in a second language, predominantly idioms; however, a combination of the two perspectives and a joint analysis on the acquisition of figurative language has yet to be accomplished. This study presents a first attempt of such analysis on the acquisition of a specific type of figurative language. The results of the experiments reported in this dissertation show that learners react differently to metaphorical expressions with different cross-linguistic availabilities (shared between Chinese and English or exclusively available in Chinese or English) but in general they encounter difficulty to achieve native-like performance when reading metaphorical expressions available in their second language. Persistent cross-linguistic influence is observed in two aspects, even among highly proficient learners: (1) learners encounter obstacles when acquiring the metaphorical expressions that are only available in their second language; and (2) learners seem to still activate the metaphorical meanings that are only available in their first language even when they read in their second language. These results altogether reflect that metaphorical expressions, regardless of cross-linguistic availability, are more difficult to acquire than literal expressions in a second language.