Chinese speakers' acquisition of English conditionals: Acquisition order and L1 transfer effects

This study examines how the syntactic complexity of English conditionals and first language transfer influence Chinese ESL learners’ acquisition order of conditionals. The differences in English and Chinese conditional constructions are presented in the paper. Brown’s (1973) Cumulative Complexity principle is employed to determine the syntactic complexity of six conditionals: present factual, past factual, future predictive, present counterfactual, past counterfactual, and mixed-time-reference counterfactual conditional. O’Grady’s (1997) Developmental Law is used as the theoretical framework for predicting the acquisition orders of the if-clause and the main clause of English conditionals. A written cloze test simulating oral conversations is used to elicit the production of English conditionals from 20 native-speakers of English and 36 adult Chinese speakers, and the answers from both groups are compared. The results of Chinese participants’ production did not support the predicted acquisition orders in the research hypotheses. Nor could the implicational scaling of acquisition order be established due to the low reproducibility. The results of a two-way repeated-measures ANOVA show an interaction of the conditional type and clause type factors. Moreover, systematic variations in the learners’ production provide evidence of L1 transfer effects, such as an over-production of certain forms, and a preference for smallest rule changes in the passage from one developmental stage to the next one. It is important to be aware of how these L1 transfer effects interact with the syntactic complexity factor in Chinese participants’ production of English conditionals, so better instruction of English conditionals can be achieved

Temporal interpretation in Navajo

We discuss temporal location in Navajo. Considering whether Navajo has the category of tense, we argue for a multi-feature approach. We propose, among other features, that tense contributes to atemporal meanings in conditionals and counter-factuals. On this basis we show three kinds of temporal forms in Navajo: a Future tense; Past and Future particles with some tense properties; and temporal adverbials. All are optional, so that many sentences have no direct temporal forms. In such cases aspectual information gives pragmatic cues to the temporal location of a situation. The key factor is boundedness: in the default case, unbounded situations are taken as Present and bounded situations as Past. To go from aspect to temporal location we posit three pragmatic principles. The principles apply to verb words with overt viewpoints and to zero-marked verb words. These principles hold for languages generally, we conjecture

Linguistic theory, linguistic diversity and Whorfian economics

Languages vary greatly in their words, sounds and sentence structures. Linguistic theory has shown that many aspects of variation are superficial and may not reflect underlying formal similarities between languages, which are relevant to how humans learn and process language. In this chapter, I show both how languages can vary and how the surface variations can be manifestations of underlying similarities. Economists have sometimes adopted a ‘Whorfian’ view that differences in languages can cause differences in how their speakers think and behave. Psychological experiments have shown both support for this hypothesis and evidence against it. Specific arguments that language causes thought, which have been made in recent economics papers, are examined in the light of what linguistics tells us about superficial and underlying variatio

A formal approach to reanalysis: The case of a negative counterfactual marker

This paper proposes a formal definition of reanalysis, while emphasizing the importance of the distinction between two different kinds of reanalysis: those in which the change is confined to the grammatical level, and those in which it is confined to the semantic level. After tracing the history of a negative counterfactual conditional marker in Hebrew and Aramaic which underwent both syntactic and semantic reanalyses, the paper assesses the concept of reanalysis with focus on the following questions: Is reanalysis a single, clearly-defined phenomenon, and if so, what is its nature? Is it merely a descriptive label for a certain observable state of affairs, or does it explain diachronic changes? Alternatively, perhaps it is a theoretical constraint, a theoretical requirement that linguistic change must be associated with specific environments where reanalysis can take place? A detailed analysis of the marker and its evolution yields the following broad hypothesis: Reanalysis of a linguistic form does not change the truth conditions of the proposition that contains it, regardless of whether the reanalysis is on the grammatical level or on the semantic level

Corpus-Based Research on Chinese Language and Linguistics

This volume collects papers presenting corpus-based research on Chinese language and linguistics, from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. The contributions cover different fields of linguistics, including syntax and pragmatics, semantics, morphology and the lexicon, sociolinguistics, and corpus building. There is now considerable emphasis on the reliability of linguistic data: the studies presented here are all grounded in the tenet that corpora, intended as collections of naturally occurring texts produced by a variety of speakers/writers, provide a more robust, statistically significant foundation for linguistic analysis. The volume explores not only the potential of using corpora as tools allowing access to authentic language material, but also the challenges involved in corpus interrogation, analysis, and building

Two-part Negation in Yang Zhuang

The negation system of Yang Zhuang includes two standard negators and an aspectual negator, all of which occur before the verb; the negator meiz nearly always co-occurs with a clause-final particle nauq, which can also stand as a single-word negative response to a question. Although it is tempting to analyze nauq with a meaning beyond simply negation, this is difficult to do synchronically. Comparison with neighboring Tai languages suggests that this construction represents one stage in Jespersen's Cycle, whereby a negator is augmented with a second element, after which the second element becomes associated with negation; this element subsequently replaces the historical negator. A Jespersen's Cycle analysis also explains the occurrence of nauq as a preverbal negator in some neighboring Zhuang languages

Ordinary insubordination as transient discourse

Insubordination – the conventionalized use of morphologically non-finite forms as finite ones – is an ordinary syntactic event in synchronic spontaneous discourse; it is also an ordinary stage of the grammaticalization of non-finite clauses as finite ones. is chapter explores the morphosyntactic typology of insubordination and its ontogeny in Inner Asian Turko-Mongolic languages. In so doing, I clarify criterial features of insubordination. I also consider whether insubordination is a transient phenomenon as part of a larger process of grammaticalization, using a rich diachronic dataset from a half dozen Inner Asian languages.Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Workshops on Insubordination, book project); U.S. National Science Foundation projects "Interactive Inner Asia" (BCS1065524) and "Uyghur Light Verbs" (BCS1053152)