Duke Scholarly Works
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Browsing Duke Scholarly Works by Affiliation "Asian & Middle Eastern Studies"
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Item Open Access Acquisition of Chinese characters: the effects of character properties and individual differences among second language learners.(Frontiers in psychology, 2015-01) Kuo, Li-Jen; Kim, Tae-Jin; Yang, Xinyuan; Li, Huiwen; Liu, Yan; Wang, Haixia; Hyun Park, Jeong; Li, YingIn light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study drew upon theories of visual complexity effect (Su and Samuels, 2010) and dual-coding processing (Sadoski and Paivio, 2013) and investigated (a) the effects of character properties (i.e., visual complexity and radical presence) on character acquisition and (b) the relationship between individual learner differences in radical awareness and character acquisition. Participants included adolescent English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese in the U.S. Following Kuo et al. (2014), a novel character acquisition task was used to investigate the process of acquiring the meaning of new characters. Results showed that (a) characters with radicals and with less visual complexity were easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity; and (b) individual differences in radical awareness were associated with the acquisition of all types of characters, but the association was more pronounced with the acquisition of characters with radicals. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed.Item Open Access Acquisition of Japanese relative clauses by L1 Chinese learners: Evidence from reflexive pronoun resolution(Second Language Research, 2022-07-01) Chen, YThis article investigates whether first-language (L1) Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese as a second language (L2) can acquire the knowledge that the reflexive pronoun jibun ‘self’ within the head noun phrase of Japanese relative clauses cannot refer to the relative clause subject. Successful acquisition would suggest that learners are able to acquire the underlying syntactic knowledge that the head noun phrase of Japanese relative clauses is base-generated external to the relative clause. A truth value judgment experiment was conducted and the findings suggest that L1 Chinese learners can indeed acquire the target syntactic knowledge in Japanese relative clauses, which argues against the Representational Deficit hypotheses and supports the Full Functional Representation hypotheses of L2 acquisition.Item Open Access Americanization of French Theory and the Rise of “Chinese Postism”(Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 2024-01-01) Liu, K; Wei, DChinese Postism refers to Chinese versions of poststructuralism, postmodernism and postcolonialism, three major western theoretical trends prefixed with “post.” Chinese Postism is largely retranslations of English translations (and interpretations) of French theories of poststructuralism and postmodernism, as well as postcolonialism as American appropriation of French theories. Revisiting the French- American-Chinese journey of theory may help uncover the broader political and ideological changes underlying the intellectual and academic trends.Item Open Access An experimental approach to the reconstruction of the head quantifier phrase in Chinese relative clauses(Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 2024-03-27) Chen, YAoun and Li (2003) argued that whether the head of Chinese relative clauses can reconstruct at Logical Form is determined by its phrasal category. When the head is a noun phrase, it can reconstruct; but when it is a quantifier phrase, it cannot. This paper uses a sentence-picture matching experiment to investigate this claim. The results showed that a quantifier phrase can reconstruct. Thus, we do not need to stipulate a noun phrase/quantifier phrase distinction for the reconstruction of heads in Chinese relative clauses. Both types of phrases can reconstruct, predicted by the head-raising analysis of relative clauses.Item Open Access An Experimental Investigation into the Scope Assignment of Japanese and Chinese Quantifier-Negation Sentences(Languages, 2024-03-01) Chen, YQuantifier-Negation sentences such as all teachers did not use Sandy’s car are known to allow an inverse scope interpretation in English. However, there is a lack of experimental evidence to determine whether this interpretation is allowed in equivalent sentences in Japanese and Chinese. To address this issue, this study conducted a sentence–picture matching truth value judgment experiment in both Japanese and Chinese. The data suggested that Japanese Quantifier-Negation sentences do allow inverse scope readings, which suggests that the subject may be interpreted within the scope of negation. In contrast, Chinese Quantifier-Negation sentences prohibit inverse scope readings, which is in accordance with the strong scope rigidity consistently observed in this language. This paper also discussed how to develop a valid experiment for investigating scope ambiguities.Item Open Access An experimental investigation of the Deep Double-o Constraint in Japanese causative constructions(Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 2024-05-27) List, Abbey; Chen, YunchuanAbstract The Double-o Constraint (DoC) was proposed to explain the ungrammaticality of having two or more noun phrases (NPs) marked by the accusative case marker -o in a single Japanese clause. It has been argued that there are two types of DoCs: the Surface Double-o Constraint (SDoC) and the Deep Double-o Constraint (DDoC). The DDoC prohibits two accusative arguments in a single argument structure and is not affected by the number of accusative case markers on the surface. The evidence is from Japanese causatives. Our study conducted an experiment to test the DDoC and found that it may only apply to some native Japanese speakers.Item Open Access Anaphor reconstruction in Japanese relative clauses(Language and Linguistics. 語言暨語言學, 2021-03-17) Chen, YunchuanAbstractThis study conducted two experiments to examine the derivation of the head noun phrase in Japanese relative clauses, with a focus on whether the anaphorsjibun‘self’ andjibun-jishin‘self-self’ within the head noun phrase can be co-referential with the relative clause subject. It aims to settle a long-standing debate among the previous studies concerning the interpretation of the anaphors inside the head noun phrase: while several studies claimed that the co-reference between the anaphorjibun‘self’ and the relative clause subject is prohibited, many other studies argued that such co-reference is possible. In addition, it has been claimed that while co-indexing the anaphorjibunwith the relative clause subject might be marginally acceptable, it would become fully acceptable if we replacejibunwith the morphologically complex anaphorjibun-jishin‘self-self’, which implies that the morphological make-up of an anaphor may affect its ability to be co-indexed with the relative clause subject.The results of two carefully controlled truth value judgment experiments show that neither the simplex anaphorjibunnor the complex anaphorjibun-jishinwithin the head noun phrase of relative clauses can take the relative clause subject as its antecedent, which suggests that the head noun phrase does not reconstruct and therefore lends support to thepro-binding analysis of Japanese relative clauses. Moreover, the findings also suggest that the morphological make-up of an anaphor does not affect its ability to take the relative clause subject as its antecedent, despite the claim that it is more acceptable to co-index the complex anaphorjibun-jishinwith the relative clause subject than the simplex anaphorjibun.Item Open Access Black Muslims and the Angels of Afrofuturism(The Black Scholar, 2023-04-03) McLarney, E; Idris, SItem Open Access Chinese Exceptionalism(2024-03-04) Kang, LiuItem Open Access Decoding case markers: L1 Chinese L2 Japanese learners’ comprehension of Japanese OSV sentences(Linguistics) Chen, YunchuanAbstract It is widely acknowledged that L2 learners whose native language lacks case markers often encounter difficulties when trying to acquire the usage of case markers in a second language. This article investigates whether L2 Japanese learners whose native language lacks case markers are able to use case marking information to comprehend Japanese OSV sentences in real time. A picture-sentence matching truth value judgment experiment was created in both listening and reading versions. A proficiency test was also developed to measure the Japanese proficiency of L2 learners. A group of L1 Chinese L2 Japanese learners and a control group of L1 Japanese speakers were recruited for this study. The findings suggest that L1 Chinese L2 Japanese learners can utilize case markers to interpret Japanese OSV sentences online, with their accuracy strongly predicted by their Japanese proficiency.Item Open Access Educator Tip - The latest in language learning technology(The Language Educator) Knapczyk, KusumItem Open Access Scope assignment in Quantifier-Negation sentences in Tibetan as a heritage language in China(Second Language Research, 2024-07-01) Chen, Y; Huan, TQuantifier-Negation sentences allow an inverse scope reading in Tibetan but not in Chinese. This difference can be attributed to the underlying syntactic difference: the negation word can be raised at Logical Form in Tibetan but not in Chinese. This study investigated whether Chinese-dominant Tibetan heritage speakers know such difference. We conducted a sentence–picture matching truth value judgment task with 28 Chinese-dominant Tibetan heritage speakers, 25 baseline Tibetan speakers and 31 baseline Chinese speakers. Our baseline data first confirmed the difference between Tibetan and Chinese: the inverse scope reading is allowed in Tibetan but prohibited in Chinese. Our heritage participants’ data showed a divergence: one group of heritage speakers allow the inverse scope reading in both Tibetan and Chinese while another group prohibit it in both languages. There is a third group of heritage speakers who are aware of the difference between Tibetan and Chinese. Our findings suggest that while it is possible for heritage speakers to attain nativelike knowledge of an interface phenomenon that differs in their two languages, they may also be subject to crosslinguistic influence and adopt one of two opposite strategies. Both strategies can minimize syntactic differences between their two grammars so an economy of syntactic representations in their repository of grammars can be achieved.Item Open Access Transforming Emotional Regime: Pai Hsien- yung’s Crystal Boys(Queer Cats Journal of LGBTQ Studies) Jiang, LinshanItem Open Access Western Theory’s Chinese Transformation: Postscript(CLCWeb - Comparative Literature and Culture, 2023-12-01) Liu, KItem Open Access 针对华裔学生的美国大学中文教材(Chinese as a Second Language (漢語教學研究—美國中文教師學會學報). The journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association, USA) Liu, Yan; Ji, Jingjing; Wu, Grace; Liang, Min-Min摘要 近些年来，美国大学中文课中传承语学习者的数量不断增加 (Xiang, 2016)。然而，现有的传承语教材数量比较少，且目前美国大学中文项目所使用的华裔中文教材也存在一定的局限性 (Luo et al., 2019)。因此，编写新的大学中文传承语教材势在必行。本文首先回顾了相关传承语教学以及中文传承语学习者的研究，然后对现有的中文传承语教材进行评估，识别其局限之处。最后，基于以上分析以及与传承语教学法和教材编写原则相关的研究，为未来中文传承语教材所应遵循的编写原则、课文话题和角度、面向群体、教学内容和活动所应遵循的标准和体例等方面提出一些建议。