Error analysis of the written Chinese of Finnish university students

Tässä Pro gradu -tutkielmassa tarkastellaan suomalaisten Kiinan kieltä opiskelevien yliopisto-opiskelijoiden kielivirheitä heidän kiinan kirjoitelmissaan. Tässä tutkielmassa Kiinan kielellä viitataan Kiinan kansantasavallan viralliseen kieleen, sen puhuttuun standardimuotoon ja yksinkertaistettuja merkkejä käyttävään kirjoitusjärjestelmään. Kiinan kielen kirjoitusjärjestelmä on opiskelijoille erityisen haastava erityispiirteidensä takia ja siksi lukemaan ja kirjoittamaan oppiminen kiinaksi kestää kauemmin kuin vastaavien taitojen saavuttaminen Suomessa yleisimmin opiskelluissa indoeurooppalaisissa kielissä. Kiinan lukemisen ja kirjoittamisen tukemiseksi on kehitetty Pinyin -tarkekirjoitusjärjestelmä, joka helpottaa Kiinan kielen tuottamista ja ymmärtämistä. Varsinaisen lukutaidon saavuttamiseksi on kuitenkin opeteltava tunnistamaan tuhansia kirjoitusmerkkejä ja niiden eri yhdistelmiä. Tutkimuksen tarkoitus on selvittää millaiset virheet ovat tyypillisiä suomea äidinkielenään puhuville opiskelijoille ja mitkä Kiinan kielen ominaisuudet ja rakenteet ovat heille erityisen haasteellisia. Tutkielma pohtii syitä korpuksessa esiintyvien virheiden taustalla niiden esiintymisympäristön, ortografian ja välikielen kautta. Suomea äidinkielenä puhuvien Kiinan kielen opiskelijoiden Kiinan kielen oppimisesta ei vielä tiedetä paljoa ja tämän tutkielman tarkoitus on kartoittaa niitä kiinan kieliopin ja sanaston solmukohtia, joiden kanssa opiskelijat erityisesti joutuvat ponnistelemaan. Tutkimuksen viitekehyksenä käytetään virheanalyysin ja välikielen teorioita ja tutkitaan kielenoppijan ja tämän virheiden välistä suhdetta. Tutkielmassa on sovellettu Selinkerin (1972) ja Corderin (1966) luomaa virheanalyysin viitekehystä Kiinan kielen kontekstissa. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan kielitaidon kahta eri osa-aluetta, sanastoa ja syntaksia, sekä niissä esiintyviä virheitä. Leksikon analyysin pohjana on käytetty Nationin ja Hunstonin (2013) mallia. Syntaksin analyysiin tukea on haettu Corderin viitekehyksestä ja Lun (1994) mallista Kiinan kielen syntaksivirheiden analysointiin. Tutkimuksen aineistona käytettiin pääosin ensimmäisen vuoden yliopisto-opiskelijoiden kotitehtävinä kirjoittamia esseitä ja lyhyitä käännöstehtäviä. Osa opiskelijoista oli Kiinan kielen pääaineopiskelijoita ja tutkimukseen osallistui yhteensä 14 opiskelijaa. Osalla opiskelijoista oli jo aikaisempia kiinanopintoja, kun taas osalla ei ollut Kiinan kielestä juuri mitään aikaisempaa kokemusta. Opiskelijat olivat eri ikäisiä ja osasivat eri kieliä. Osalla opiskelijoista oli kotikielenään suomen lisäksi vielä jokin toinenkin tai kolmas kieli. Tutkimuksen aineistona käytettiin 28 opiskelijoiden kirjoittamaa esseetä ja samaa määrää lyhyitä käännöstehtäviä. Aineisto kerättiin keväällä 2019. Opiskelijoiden tekstit olivat pituudeltaan noin 200-320 merkkiä ja suurin osa opiskelijoista kirjoitti samoista aiheista. Osa teksteistä oli käsinkirjoitettuja, kun taas osa oli kirjoitettu tietokoneella. Opiskelijoiden virheet laskettiin ja analysoitiin niiden kieliopillisten ominaisuuksien mukaan. Luokittelun perusteena käytettiin erilaisia jaotteluja, eikä kirjoitus- ja lyöntivirheitä laskettu mukaan. Tutkimuksessa selviää, että suomea puhuvat opiskelijat kamppailevat melko lailla samojen rakenteiden kanssa kuin muitakin kieliä äidinkielinään puhuvat kiinanopiskelijat. Erityisen vaikeita ovat rakenteet, jotka ovat uniikkeja Kiinan kielelle tai rakenteet, joita ei varsinaisesti löydy suomenkielessä. Selvästi suomenkielestä johtuvaa kielivaihtoa löytyi aineistosta vähän, mutta koska Kiinaa opiskellaan Suomessa pitkälti englannin kielen kautta, esiin tuli joitakin mitä luultavimmin englanninkielestä siirtyneitä yksityiskohtia. Opiskelijat tekivät joitakin varsinaisia leksikkovirheitä. Opiskelijat tekivät huomattavasti enemmän syntaksiin kuin sanastoon liittyviä virheitä. Virheitä oli kokonaisuudessaan niukalti, mutta niiden perusteella saattoi tehdä johtopäätökisä opiskelijoiden virheiden laadusta ja syistä. Tutkielma antaa viitteitä suomea puhuvien kiinanopiskelijoiden tyypillisimmistä virheistä ja välikielestä, sekä käyttökelpoisen pohjan ja hyödyllistä tietoa jatkotutkimuksen, opetuksen ja oppikirjamateriaalien kehittämisen käyttöön

Language, Identity, and Writing: Investigating Marshallese English through Academic Writing

English has emerged as an international language. The hegemonic positioning of English is problematic for previously colonized places such as the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The remote coral atoll Pacific Island nation of the Republic of the Marshall Islands has a history of colonization. Critical Literacy supports reflective analysis of social constructs created and used in language to reveal power structures and be a source of change. Language is a significant piece of culture transmitting ideas, information, world view, and culture. Marshall Islanders, at home and abroad, interact in English. World Englishes establishes validity for variations of language, specifically English, within the context that it is used. There is a need to recognize and validate Marshallese English as a World English. This mixed methods study examined the grammatical and lexical elements in a corpus of Marshallese authored academic English writing. The findings were then expanded upon by Marshallese culture member interviews, to correlate the findings with Marshallese language and culture. The findings identified connections between Marshallese language and culture and Marshallese English. Grammatical differences between English and Marshallese, as well as differing epistemologies were evidenced in the data. Key findings include linguistic representation of politeness, social hierarchy, language, and funds of knowledge. Identifying Marshallese English elements in the corpus reinforced the value of first language identity, as well as informed instruction in English and all content areas for bilingual Marshallese people. This research project contributed to the body of knowledge on Marshallese, Marshallese English. This asset based approach to biliteracy strengthened Marshallese linguistic connections

The Study of Teacher Written Feedback: The Effectiveness of Electronic Feedback on Student Writing Revisions

The effectiveness of teacher written feedback has been a subject of debate in second language writing for decades. The most basic debate in this area among ESL writing researchers is whether teacher written feedback in various forms has any positive effects on student writing revisions. Among other researchers, Ferris, Lee, Ene & Upton and Stevenson & Phakiti argued that while the effectiveness of error feedback in the traditional paper-and-pen form (Ferris, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and Lee, 2008a, 2008b), computer-facilitated form (Ene & Upton, 2014) or computer-generated form (Stevenson & Phakiti, 2013) was not conclusive, more research should be done to explore in what ways error feedback can be improved. Indeed, the heterogeneity of these studies characterized by different focus, research designs, institutional and instructional contexts, and participant backgrounds, alongside some methodological flaws and misinterpretation of findings identified in my critical review has possibly undermined the validity and reliability of the studies, giving rise to these mixed results for both paper-and-pen feedback and computer-based feedback. As such, the causality between different forms of feedback treatment and their outcomes of error reduction is questioned. With the primary interest in improving the effectiveness of teacher written feedback in error correction, ‘Mark My Words’ (‘MMWs’), the interactive-based electronic feedback system, was designed in such a way to accommodate individual learners’ language needs and to be more responsive to various error types. This study focused on examining on the effectiveness of ‘Mark My Words’ (‘MMWs’), as a kind of computer-facilitated feedback (i.e. electronic feedback), in improving students’ error reduction in their writing revisions, under a controlled condition. The mixed methods approach was adopted, namely the ‘error count’ method and ‘questionnaire’, in this study. The participants were 62 second-year engineering students enrolled in an English for Specific Purposes course in a Hong Kong University. Efforts were made to avoid the impact of extraneous variables on the validity and reliability of the research outcomes under such controlled condition. The positive results of this study can contribute some sort of concrete evidence to the growing body of literature of the ‘effectiveness of teacher written feedback’ and ‘second language writing’, thus clarifying some mixed results of the previous research

Can humain association norm evaluate latent semantic analysis?

This paper presents the comparison of word association norm created by a psycholinguistic experiment to association lists generated by algorithms operating on text corpora. We compare lists generated by Church and Hanks algorithm and lists generated by LSA algorithm. An argument is presented on how those automatically generated lists reflect real semantic relations

Chomskyan (R)evolutions

It is not unusual for contemporary linguists to claim that “Modern Linguistics began in 1957” (with the publication of Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures). Some of the essays in Chomskyan (R)evolutions examine the sources, the nature and the extent of the theoretical changes Chomsky introduced in the 1950s. Other contributions explore the key concepts and disciplinary alliances that have evolved considerably over the past sixty years, such as the meanings given for “Universal Grammar”, the relationship of Chomskyan linguistics to other disciplines (Cognitive Science, Psychology, Evolutionary Biology), and the interactions between mainstream Chomskyan linguistics and other linguistic theories active in the late 20th century: Functionalism, Generative Semantics and Relational Grammar. The broad understanding of the recent history of linguistics points the way towards new directions and methods that linguistics can pursue in the future

The Crisis of Language in Contemporary Japan: Reading, Writing, and New Technology

My dissertation is an ethnographically inspired theoretical exploration of the crises of reading and writing in contemporary Japan. Each of the five chapters examines concrete instances of reading and writing practices that have been problematized in recent decades. By calling attention to underlying moral assumptions, established sociocultural protocols, and socio-technological conditions of the everyday, I theorize the concept of embodied reading and writing thresholds. The scope of analysis is partly informed by popular discourse decrying a perceived decline in reading and writing proficiency among Japanese youth. This alleged failing literacy figures as a national crisis under the assumption that the futurity of children's national language proficiency metonymically correlates with the future well being of its national cultural body. In light of heightened interests in the past, present, and future of books, and a series of recent state interventions on the prospect of "national" text culture, it is my argument that ongoing tensions surrounding the changing media landscape and symbolic relations to the world do not merely reflect changes in styles of language, structures of spatiotemporal awareness, or forms of knowledge production. Rather, they indicate profound transformations and apprehensions among the lives mediated and embodied by the very system of signification that has come under scrutiny in the post-Lost Decade Japan (03/1991-01/2002). My dissertation offers an unique point of critical intervention into 1) various forms of tension arising from the overlapping media technologies and polarized population, 2) formations of reading and writing body (embodiment) at an intersection of heterogeneous elements and everyday disciplining, 3) culturally specific conditions and articulations of the effects of "universal" technologies, 4) prospects of "proper" national reading and writing culture, and 5) questions of cultural transformation and transmission. I hope that the diverse set of events explored in respective chapters provide, as a whole, a broader perspective of the institutional and technological background as well as an intimate understanding of culturally specific circumstances in Japan. Insofar as this is an attempt to conduct a nuanced inquiry into the culturally specific configurations and articulations of a global phenomenon, each ethnographic moment is carefully contextualized to reflect Japan specific conditions while avoiding the pitfall of culturalist assumptions. Understanding how an existing system of representation, technological imperatives and sociohistorical predicaments have coalesced to form a unique constellation is the first step in identifying how the practice of reading and writing becomes a site of heated national debate in Japan. Against theories that problematize the de-corporealizing effects of digital technology within reading and writing, I emphasize the material specificity of contemporary reading and writing practices

Methods in Contemporary Linguistics

The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests

Low-Resource Unsupervised NMT:Diagnosing the Problem and Providing a Linguistically Motivated Solution

Unsupervised Machine Translation hasbeen advancing our ability to translatewithout parallel data, but state-of-the-artmethods assume an abundance of mono-lingual data. This paper investigates thescenario where monolingual data is lim-ited as well, finding that current unsuper-vised methods suffer in performance un-der this stricter setting. We find that theperformance loss originates from the poorquality of the pretrained monolingual em-beddings, and we propose using linguis-tic information in the embedding train-ing scheme. To support this, we look attwo linguistic features that may help im-prove alignment quality: dependency in-formation and sub-word information. Us-ing dependency-based embeddings resultsin a complementary word representationwhich offers a boost in performance ofaround 1.5 BLEU points compared to stan-dardWORD2VECwhen monolingual datais limited to 1 million sentences per lan-guage. We also find that the inclusion ofsub-word information is crucial to improv-ing the quality of the embedding