Characteristics of Vietnamese lexis of Vietnamese Australian immigrants

The Vietnamese of Australian communities (VAC) still maintains many obsolete expressions originating from and related to the Southern Vietnamese political institutions of the pre-1975 Southern government. In addition, VAC has adopted English loanwords (ELs) through close contact with Australian English and uses them extensively to fill gaps in vocabulary. English loanwords have not only been borrowed in their original forms but were also nativized through the mechanism of loanwords and loan translation. Moreover, hybridised expressions have been coined by Vietnamese Australian émigrés through the compounding of one English or Vietnamese item with a Vietnamese or English item through loan blending

Sinophone Southeast Asia

This volume explores the diverse linguistic landscape of Southeast Asia’s Chinese communities. Based on archival research and previously unpublished linguistic fieldwork, it unearths a wide variety of language histories, linguistic practices, and trajectories of words. The localized and often marginalized voices we bring to the spotlight are quickly disappearing in the wake of standardization and homogenization, yet they tell a story that is uniquely Southeast Asian in its rich hybridity. Our comparative scope and focus on language, analysed in tandem with history and culture, adds a refreshing dimension to the broader field of Sino-Southeast Asian Studies. . Readership: Students, scholars, (academic) libraries, community organizations, heritage organizations; linguistics, Southeast Asia Studies, East Asia Studies, Overseas Chines

The Bilingual Lemma Activation Model as a Comparative Approach to Codeswitching

This paper explores intrasentential Codeswitching (CS) as a commonly observed bilingual speech behavior. Different from surface-based models, it investigates CS at an abstract level by relating the nature and activity of the bilingual mental lexicon in bilingual speech production to the structural principles governing CS. The Matrix Language Frame (MLF) Model is adopted for describing some fundamental structural principles governing CS, and the Bilingual Lemma Activation Model (BLA) is proposed for explaining the linguistic motivations for CS. Based on the analysis of some naturally occurring CS instances involving various language pairs, this study supports the claim that one of the bilingual’s languages is activated as the Matrix Language (ML) and the other as the Embedded Language (EL), and content and system morphemes are unequally activated. It is the ML which provides the sentential frame for CS and the EL only provides content morphemes switched into this frame. It further argues that bilingual mental lexicon contains not only lexemes but also more abstract elements called “lemmas”, and lemmas in the bilingual mental lexicon are language-specific and such lemmas are in contact in CS. This study provides evidence that only conceptually activated EL lemmas can be switched into the ML sentential frame

English Tsunami In Indonesian

English has successfully overwhelmed Indonesian like tsunami as an imperialistic language. The meaning of imperialism here, however, differs from the conventional meaning as it is invited imperialism, not coerced imperialism.The influence of English in Indonesian is discussed in terms of modernization, globalization, economy, and history. The linguistic tsunami effects are overwhelming, staggering, and unstoppable. The data for this article were collected from various sources, and it was found that the number of English words (pure and modified) is indeed confounding. Virtually English words have penetrated all walks of life. Unfortunately, there is no way we can prevent English influence on Indonesian, it is simply inevitable and we cannot do anything about it. Seen from linguistic purism, we have lost the battle in fighting off English influence; but seen from the eye of a descriptive linguist, it is an unpreventable historical phenomenon. It is a lingusitic dynamism in which language is altered and enriched by a continuous input from other languages, the most influential language being the major donor of loanwords of the receiving language. If it is considered a problem, the solution is to change our attitude to realize that any living language continues undergoing modifications and we should be willing to accommodate them. It is the dialectics of world history

Pragmatic borrowing between English and Chinese: A comparative study of two-way exchanges

Through centuries of cross-cultural communication, English has been enriched by elements from other languages around the world, including Chinese; meanwhile, English has also exerted considerable influence on the Chinese language. Lexical exchanges between the two languages have been studied in previous research, and yet are mostly restricted to the lexical items themselves. This thesis particularly explores the pragmatic aspect of this language contact, examining items that are used to convey attitudinal or interpersonal meanings. I conduct a series of case studies on bi-directional pragmatic borrowing between English and Chinese, using a variety of data sources, which include dictionaries, corpora, social media data, and other online resources. I take a broad view of what constitutes pragmatic borrowing: I not only investigate the borrowing and integration of discourse-pragmatic items that are transferred between the two languages, but also examine the pragmatic motivations for the borrowing of other lexical items and even grammatical units. The items discussed in the thesis range from parts of words, specifically affixes, to individual words to longer structures, and contextual analysis shows that all of these have been used to achieve pragmatic effects. The study demonstrates the important role of cultural context, speaker creativity, and sociolinguistic factors in the borrowing, integration, and innovative use of linguistic items

A corpus-based study of Chinese and English translation of international economic law: an interdisciplinary study

International Economic Law (IEL), a sub-discipline of International Law, is concerned with the regulation of international economic relations and the behaviours of States, international organisations, and firms operating in the international arena. Due to the increase in commercial intercourse, translation of International Economic Law has become an important factor in promoting cross-cultural communication. The translation of IEL is not purely a technical exercise that simply involves the linguistic translations from one language to another but rather a social and cultural act. This research sets out to examine the translation of terminology used in International Economic Law (IEL) – drawing on data from a bespoke self-built Parallel Corpus of International Economic Law (PCIEL) using a corpus-based, systematic micro-level framework – to analyse the subject matter and to discuss the feasibility of translating these legal terms at the word level, and the sentence and discourse level, with a particular focus on the impact of cultural influences. The study presents the findings from the Chinese translator’s perspective regarding International Economic Law from English/Chinese into Chinese/English with a focus on the areas of law, economics, and culture. The contribution made by a corpus-based approach applied to the interdisciplinary subject of IEL is explored. In particular, this establishes a link between linguistic and non-linguistic study in translating legal texts, especially IEL. The corpus data are organized in different semantic fields and the translation analysis covers lexical, sentential and cultural perspectives. This research demonstrates that not only linguistic factors, but, also, cultural factors make clear contributions to the translation of terminology in PCIEL